Preamble

The House met at Eleven o'clock

PRAYERS

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

TOWN MEETINGS AND TOWNS' POLLS, BIRMINGHAM

11.5 a.m.

Mr. Henry Usborne: I beg to move,
That this House desires to abolish the statutory obligation to hold Town Meetings and Towns' Polls as at present defined in Section 255, and the 9th Schedule of the Local Government Act, 1933.
Before I begin my argument, I should like to apologise to right hon. and hon. Members, for, I think, completely "foxing" them on the afternoon of Wednesday, 4th March. I remember that, as the winning ticket in the Ballot was pulled out of the black box, and was handed to you, Mr. Speaker, a number of hon. Members, so I suspected, staked and lost their shirts, for I recall hearing at that moment one of my hon. Friends say, "I bet a 'bob' I know what he is going to propose."
The House, evidently, thought that I should be drawing attention to the need for world government. On this occasion, I did not run true to form, and I sincerely hope that neither the present hon. Member for Bolton, West (Mr. Holt) nor his predecessor, Mr. John Lewis, will think it necessary, therefore, to have me destroyed or refuse to pay my price.
I wish to draw attention to the absurdity of the town hall procedure and the voting procedure at the town meeting. It is the object of my Motion to urge the Government to bring in the necessary amending legislation to change these practices, which are now obligatory. Rather like my interest in world government, my view of the town's poll is a bee which has been buzzing violently, and for many years, in my bonnet. I am delighted, on this occasion, to give the beast its freedom.
I have never been a city father or city councillor myself, but I first had experience of a town's poll a few years after I became a Member of Parliament, representing the City of Birmingham, when, in 1948, the Birmingham Corporation produced its first post-war corporation Bill. I noticed that, on that occasion, two of the clauses which, I understand, the elected councillors in their wisdom have approved, were thrown out on the vote of the town's poll by a tiny majority of the Birmingham electors—in fact, less than 3 per cent.
Moreover, to provide the mechanism by which, to quote from a memorandum of the Association of Municipal Councils,
a small interested body of people could defeat what would generally be considered a beneficial measure",
the ratepayers of the City of Birmingham were put to a cost of over £2,000 to provide the facilities for the town's poll where this farce was staged.
Since that occasion, in 1948, there have been three further corporation Bills prepared in Birmingham. On each occasion the story which has unfolded as a result of the provisions of the 1933 Act has been more lunatic. Recently, a correspondent of The Times, writing from Birmingham on 22nd December last, had this to say:
Birmingham ratepayers have been saved a bill of £7,000, the estimated cost of holding a town's poll.
He went on to say:
The project is Birmingham's most important single civic development for 50 years, and party leaders on the city council can remember no previous occasion when a major scheme received the unanimous approval of the members as this did. The council claim that there is negligible opposition to the Bill from the public. Such as there has been has been brought by Mr. Gregory Prescott, secretary of the Birmingham Ratepayers' Alliance. When the corporation held the statutory town's meeting to consider the Bill the draft of it was approved by a majority of six to one. Mr. Prescott, nevertheless, announced that he would continue the struggle and would collect the 100 electors' signatures needed to requisition a town's poll. Corporation leaders said that the city would be put to considerable expense and deprived of the services of 1,000 officials for a day to hold the poll, the outcome of which appeared to be beyond doubt to everybody but Mr. Prescott.
Nevertheless, Mr. Prescott continued with his objection and collected, so he said, 325 signatures to his petition. This was in a city of approximately 1 million


inhabitants. I am glad to say that even the secretary of the Birmingham Ratepayers' Alliance appears to have fits of sanity and that during one of these he was persuaded to abandon his extravagant folly.
What a fantastic situation it is when, in the fair name of democracy, one exhibitionist with 100 signatures can force a town with a population as numerous as that of the sovereign State of Albania to conduct what amounts to a general election in order to overrule the objection of less than one-ten-thousandth of the electorate.
I am not against a corporation holding a public meeting so that its chairman shall explain to the citizens what is contained in a corporation Bill that it intends to present ultimately to Parliament. I am in favour of a general public meeting being held for that purpose. What I object to in the terms of my Motion is that this town meeting, as it is called, is not just a public meeting where an explanation is given and objections are listened to, but is, in effect, a kind of minor parliament where clauses are put, much as we do during a Committee stage in the House of Commons, and each of them has to be discussed and then can be voted on. It is the voting procedure which I am against.
I am not against the city fathers having to advertise and to explain to the citizens of their city what is contained in the Bill. I want the House to understand that there is that difference.
The reasoned criticisms of town meeting and towns' polls are many and various. Most of them can be read in the Report of the last Select Committee which examined the problem as recently as 1955. It would weary the House if I enumerated them all. I know that a good many of my hon. Friends propose to try and catch your eye, Mr. Speaker, and that they are much more familiar with this than I am.
I should like to touch upon one aspect of this problem which has not received sufficient attention. On 21st January, 1954, a letter which I wrote about towns' polls, although, curiously enough, it was headed "Towns' Meetings", was published on the centre page of The Times. The letter was also signed by the hon.

Member for Birmingham, Stetchford (Mr. Roy Jenkins). I hope that students of the problem will examine the letter. I do not intend to quote from it, nor was it a tremendously important letter in itself. The value of the letter was contained in the quite delightful reply which it provoked, because on the following day there appeared in The Times a very beautiful letter, also headed "Towns' Meetings", which I will now read:
Sir,
You publish a letter today from two Members of Parliament which contains the sentence, 'And few would now contend that too many checks cannot be at least as harmful to democracy as too few'. I have read this fifteen times: ten times silently, four times aloud and once to a psalm chant. I have written it out, in columns, in coloured chalks, in concern. I have tried the translator's trick of transposition—'few … cannot', therefore 'many … can'. And I am still defeated. I know what I think they are trying to say, but have they said it?
Perhaps we did not make our point entirely clear, and it is that point which very briefly I want to try to make more clear today.
In a society where the franchise is universal and the number of electors is considerable, the demos cannot legislate. By that I mean that it cannot take part in what I might call the Committee stage debate. Such a mass of people can neither comprehend nor decide legislative detail. I think that we all agree upon that. To ask it to do so is to make a nonsense of democracy. Even 600 experienced Members of Parliament are generally regarded as too many to make sense of the Committee stage of a Bill. That is presumably why we generally send our Bills upstairs to a Committee which has a quorum of only 14. For that same reason, we reserve to the larger assembly the right to give a Bill Second and Third Reading decisions, on which occasions the House can only accept or reject the entire Bill.
Thus, in the House of Commons, we admit the importance of a general principle, namely, that details are best decided by small Committees. Entire Bills may be accepted or rejected by the entire assembly. Moreover, let it be noted, the more important is the issue of the entire Bill and the more it excites the interest of the whole House, the more the decision becomes, in practice, one about people and the less about policy.
In the last analysis, on a vote of confidence in the House we decide not upon the Bill at all. We decide the fate of the Minister who introduces it and of his Cabinet colleagues. In short, the House, in these circumstances, decides whether it will continue the contract of the existing Executive, or whether it prefers to replace that lot of people with another lot. We decide the fate of a Cabinet, whom we can see, and whose characters it is easy to judge.
By the same reasoning, one rejects the doctrine of the mandate in General Elections. The electors, the demos, it is argued, should choose people, certainly in the light of their professions, but people in the form of a political party and not a list of policy proposals. It is people the electors then dismiss if they disapprove of their performance. The demos can choose its political servants and then, after the appropriate contract is terminated, it can, and often does, and I hope will, properly dismiss them.
What the electorate cannot do, and should never be asked to do, is to decide an issue of policy detail. Democracy is superlative at hiring and firing its servants without having to shoot them, but it is manifestly incapable of drafting legislation.

Mr. Dudley Williams: I am following the argument which the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Mr. Usborne) is making. Surely that is what happens in the Socialist Party, when resolutions are passed at conferences and then they actually become part of its legislative programme at the polls. It seems rather strange that the hon. Member is arguing this line.

Mr. Usborne: I do not see how the hon. Member can have followed my argument, since he was not here to hear it. If he does not object, I shall continue with my speech.
At this point, one may ask, what of the referendum which is so successfully practised in Switzerland and what of the ideal form of democracy of ancient Greece where everybody took part and even voted?

Mr. Ede: Only one-tenth of the population voted. The other nine-tenths were slaves.

Mr. Usborne: I shall come to that. I agree that nine-tenths never could vote.
I want to make, very briefly, the two arguments against this, because those who support town meetings and towns' polls think that they are supporting them on the ground that this is ideal democracy. As to the referendum one need only say this. If the case for legislation by referendum could ever be made out—and I do not think it can—surely the case for the Gallup Poll would be made even stronger. Dr. Gallup can assess more quickly, cheaply and accurately anything that a referendnm can decide, but no one, I suspect, wishes to be governed by Gallup.
As for the Athenian ideal, consider the microphones in this Chamber. In the Committee rooms upstairs, we do not have them.

Mr. Harold Gurden: Since I have heard what the hon. Member has said, may I ask the same question, which is quite relevant, as my hon. Friend the Member for Exeter (Mr. Dudley Williams) asked about the trade unions and other things?

Mr. Usborne: Surely the House will forgive me if I do not answer the question. I am not dealing with the practice of trade unions. I happened to be dealing with something which has been on the Statute Book since 1872 and which, I think, does not work.
I come back to the ideal Athenian democracy. In this House, which is the epitome of perfect democracy, we have in the big Chamber the microphones, whereas in the little chambers upstairs—the Committee rooms, where we send our Bills for detailed scrutiny—we do not have them. Athenian democracy held its fiat just as far as the human voice could carry. Fortunately for the ancient Greeks, they knew nothing of electricity and telephonics. I submit that as their knowledge of science has grown, their democracy has declined.
If the House has followed me thus far, it will, I think, agree that in the town's poll this first elemental principle of democracy is standing firmly on its head. In the town's poll, electors have to choose, not people, but detailed policy. For


instance, on 9th January, 1958, three-quarters of a million Birmingham citizens ostensibly were asked:
Are you in favour of: 'That the electors of the City of Birmingham hereby approve the promotion by the council of that City of Clause 10 (As to purchase of land for purposes relating to redevelopment of areas of bad layout and obsolete development) of the Birmingham Corporation Bill 1958 …'
Eight other similar Clauses were presented to the citizens of the town which I have the honour to represent.
How could the general run of the citizenry know what that was all about? One might just as well have printed the questions in Sanskrit and presented them to the babies in their prams. Indeed, it might have been more sensible to do so. The consequent howl of indignation would have been far more audible. Let us be honest about this. It is by no means as simple a problem as it might seem, otherwise the Motion which I am moving this morning, and which has been before the House before, would most certainly have been passed and implemented long ago.
The abolition of the towns' poll has been recommended in the last thirty years on no fewer than three occasions by a Royal Commission, a Consolidation Committee and a Select Committee of this House, all unanimously. Indeed, as far as I can see, no body of people has ever investigated the problem without coming to the conclusions which are set out in the Motion.
It would be useful if I devote my attention, not to the argument for abolition, which must be surely evident, but to some of the reasons why it may be thought advisable to retain a system which certainly seems silly. Walt Whitman, in his Song of the Broad Axe," wrote of
the never-ending audacity of elected persons.
There is, I suppose, a good deal in his complaint. I take it that the town meeting was originally designed to provide the citizens with the opportunity of discovering what new folly the exuberance of their councillors had produced and that the town's poll was a mechanism by which this folly could be repudiated.
When a corporation applies to Parliament for new powers, there are at least 10 check points between the moment

when its Bill is mooted until the day when it gets the Royal Assent. I calculate that in eight of these instances, the views of the objectors can be heard, and must be overruled, if the Bill is to continue unaltered on its journey. Let me list these check points, because they are important. First, when the council committees prepares the Clauses which it desires to include, a vote must be taken; and, presumably, councillors represent their constituents. Secondly, when the council as a whole debates the whole corporation Bill, again a vote has to be taken. Thirdly, when the draft Bill is submitted to the Minister for approval, he can object to it. Fourthly, when the Bill is debated at the town meeting, it can be voted on. Fifthly, when the Clauses, then defeated, are put to the electorate at the subsequent town's poll, votes are again taken.
Then, when the Chairman of Ways and Means presents the same Bill for Second Reading in this House, any Member of Parliament can object to it on the nod. Then, if he does so, there is a debate at 7 p.m. on Tuesday or Wednesday evening on the Floor of the House, when the objections can be ventilated and Instructions can be moved by hon. Members and accepted by the House if it so desires. Then, the Bill goes upstairs to be carefully considered by a Select Committee, on which four Members of Parliament sit as assessors or whatever one likes to call them.
All these four Members of Parliament are known to all of us and, therefore, our constituents, making use of their local Members of Parliament, can get their objections and views through to these four Members of Parliament. I, representing part of the City of Birmingham, could have a word with any one of the four Members who happened to be sitting on the Committee dealing with the corporation Bill. Thereafter, the Bill has to have its Report and Third Reading in both Houses.
It is my submission that the fourth and fifth checks—that is, the voting at the town meeting and the holding of the town poll—can safely be eliminated. I do not deny that a corporation Bill should be advertised and explained to the citizens. I am arguing only that at that particular meeting there is no sense in taking votes. The object of taking


the vote can be better achieved by putting the objection later in subsequent stages through which the Bill has to pass. I suggest particularly that use be made of Members of Parliament.
I should like to suggest, by an illustration, how that happens and how the checking can take effect without the need to use a vote. Some years ago, in a Private Bill, the Birmingham Corporation asked for powers to take over and to close a cemetery. To the city fathers, this decision apparently seemed obvious and was, in fact, unanimous. Then, when their intention was made known, quite properly, by advertisement and by explanation at the town meeting, a certain lady—I do not know who she was, but let us call her Mrs. Jones—protested bitterly because she wished to be buried next to her husband in that cemetery, which her family had used for a long time.
That was an important objection. As far as I gather, it had entirely escaped the attention of the council. Indeed, so emotional an issue was it that it was not, or should not have been, difficult to get 100 electors to sign a petition to requisition a town poll. Had the town poll been held, however, it is certain to me that the Clause to give power to the corporation to take over the cemetery, as well as to close it, would certainly have been lost. It would have been lost, not because Mrs. Jones and others like her desired to be buried in the cemetery, which was a perfectly legitimate objection, It would have been certainly lost because the tiny percentage of electors who were needed to do this and who would take the trouble to vote would probably be objecting to the practice of cremation or, alternatively, might be financially interested in the business of monumental masonry. I am, however, glad to say that that was not what happened.
What happened on that occasion, contrasted with what might have occurred, supports my argument for holding a meeting without the voting procedure. In fact, as a result of Mrs. Jones' proper criticism, the council agreed to modify its demands. It agreed to take over the cemetery, but not immediately to close it.
One other illustration will, I hope, suffice. In its 1958 Bill, the Birmingham Corporation asked to be allowed to in-

vest the Civic Superannuation Fund in equities. This proposal, I understand, had been agreed by both the major parties on the council. It was criticised, and mildly at that, by only a small section of Liberal opinion.
In the same Bill there was another Clause seeking powers to sell petrol in municipal car parks. Also, there were some other controversial Clauses. At the town meeting on this occasion nine Clauses were voted down. All of them were eventually put to a town's poll because the council, naturally, wanted to defend them. There was, one admits, a considerable body of electors who objected to the municipality selling petrol in its car parks. This objection would obviously occur to the garage proprietors and it would be fair for them, under the present procedure, to vote against it.
To do so effectively in that poll the garage proprietors' lobby had to tell their supporters to put their crosses against all nine Clauses on the voting paper because it was quite impossible to explain to the average citizen which of the nine Clauses the garages wanted to defeat, and safety lay in defeating them all. Naturally, the garage lobby had no interest in the Superannuation Fund Clause. Indeed, I do not suppose that they knew what it was all about, but to eliminate the offending Clause 48 they succeeded, by the vote at the town's poll, in eliminating the whole lot. This cost the ratepayers of Birmingham £6,000.
There is little to be said for voting at the town meeting and less for the procedure known as the town's poll. To the extent that either institution provides an opportunity for an aggrieved elector to express his objection there are, I believe, better opportunities when the Bill comes before Parliament, if we are prepared to make use of them. Then the objection can sensibly be put either by a Member of Parliament, on behalf of his constituents, at seven o'clock, or by many other means. There is never, as far as I can discover, any occasion where a grievance which presently uses the vote at the town meeting or the ballot box in the poll could not be better put at one of the Bill's staging posts as it passes through the Palace of Westminster. This being so, there seems no valid reason at all for retaining the town's


poll or the voting procedure at the town meeting.
I give just one more reason why I want to do away with these redundant checks. I have been told that one of the criticisms of the present Private Bill procedure is that it is so easy, through these dozen check points, particularly the town meeting and the town's poll, to apply the checks, and that that fact actually tends to increase and not to decrease the never-ending audacity which, presumably, it is designed to restrain. Just because so much of every corporation Bill is expected to be struck out long before it reaches the Royal Assent, many councillors may be sorely tempted—I trust that they never are—to play politics by including in their Bills measures which they know will never reach the Statute Book, mainly with an eye to party propaganda. If that be so then many checks are not always advantageous and they may actually he harmful to democracy.
It was in 1953 that my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) and I decided to object systematically on the nod to every Private Bill which came up in this House. I did this because I wanted to draw attention to the points which I have had the opportunity to ventilate today. I suppose that partly as a result of this tactic the recent Select Committee was set up. Its findings, published in 1955, in paragraph 79, concluded
that town meetings and polls cannot any longer be justified.
I am very conscious of the need vigilantly to restrain the powers of the Executive at every level. We are not yet in 1984, but we could easily approach it if we were not constantly alert to the danger. Let no essential check be lightly cast aside. I am with the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Mr. Gurden) there. But far more dangerous, I assert, than the omission of one safeguard may be the possibility that Parliamentary democracy as a whole could become discredited by too many.
These are foreign and colonial students in Birmingham, as there must be in many of our large towns. These young people watch the towns' polls. Perhaps they come to Britain suspecting that Parliamentary democracy is, as Karl Marx suggests, merely a cloak under cover of

which vested interests block progress. We in this House know that that is largely untrue, but let us never feed such a suspicion. Surely that is the best argument for supporting my Motion, and I hope the House will agree to it.

11.35 a.m.

Wing Commander Eric Bullus: I beg to second the Motion.
I think the House will congratulate the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Mr. Usborne) on his good fortune in the Ballot, and some of us would commend his choice of subject. As he himself has said, the subject has been discussed on many occasions in this House. I think it is good to give it a periodic airing in the hope that at some time we may have amending legislation. I shall not concern myself with the first part of the Motion, which may engender some controversy among Birmingham and district representatives but which I shall regard as parochial.
It may be recalled that just two years ago, on 14th February 1957, I sought a Second Reading for the Local Government (Promotion of Bills) Bill, which sought to abolish town meetings and towns' polls. On that day a Second Reading was refused, but a week later some Member forgot to object, perhaps because I was not in my place here at that time, and the Bill got its Second Reading. Thereafter about five Committee meetings upstairs brought nothing more than a prolonged debate as to when the Committee should next meet, before, mercifully, the proceedings ended for lack of a quorum at successive meetings.

Mr. Charles Pannell: An organised lack of a quorum.

Wing Commander Bullus: The arguments then advanced were not answered, and I make no excuse for repeating them very briefly this morning. The necessity for a town's meeting is a handicap which was placed on boroughs as long ago as 1872. The Association of Municipal Corporations, of which some of us are vice-presidents, and which represents practically every borough and county borough in England and Wales, was originally formed to work for the abolition of this handicap, and it still presses strongly for that amendment of the law. The Urban District Councils' Association,


as well as the Association of Municipal Corporations, and, as the hon. Member has said, three important independent Commissions have recommended this very necessary alteration.
One of the strongest arguments for abolishing town meetings and towns' polls is that the requirements do not apply to all types of local authority. County councils and rural district councils can promote Bills without this handicap merely because those bodies were constituted after 1872 and they are not required to obtain the consent of their electors for the promotion of a Parliamentary Bill. Hence an obvious anomaly should be righted in the interests of uniformity in local government requirements. It is quite wrong, I think, that two types of local authority must obtain the consent of their electors at a town's meeting and perhaps by a town's poll before they can come to Parliament with a Bill while the other two types are not under obligation so to do.
It should never be forgotten that any Bill is subject, as the hon. Member has said, to the vigilance of Parliament. Parliament is the final arbiter and the final safeguard. I well recall the controversy three years ago when the Leeds Corporation promoted a Bill and a town's meeting was held and the objectors were overruled and that Bill came to this House. The irony is that I was one of those who organised the opposition to four Clauses which would have enabled the Corporation of Leeds to embark on municipal trading. I helped to organise the objections to those four Clauses, and yet I say that town meetings and towns' polls are useless. I only recall that in order that some of my hon. Friends will not think that I am not a Tory.
A local government elector has the opportunity to express to his local authority, to his Member of Parliament and to the Minister of Housing and Local Government his views about proposals for the promotion of Bills by his local authority. Such proposals are also advertised locally, and the Bill is always made available for inspection. Always, Parliament has to be satisfied that the proposed Bill ought to be passed into law.
I commend the suggestion made by the hon. Member for Yardley that in place

of a town meeting there could well be a public meeting at which the proposals of any Bill could be explained and any objections tabulated and sent, if necessary, to this House. Another unanswerable argument for the Motion is that no council of a borough can ever obtain the real approval of the electors by a town meeting or town's poll. There is no hall in any borough that can accommodate those who would be entitled to vote. Indeed, I doubt if one per cent. of the electors of any borough could be accommodated in the largest hall in that borough.

Mr. Dudley Williams: We have had all this before in discussions upon this matter. There is no reason why the meeting should take place in a hall. Why not have it on a football ground?

Wing Commander Bullus: I will answer that question by posing another question. How many people would go to the football ground?

Mr. Victor Yates: Will the hon. and gallant Gentleman bear in mind that there is no football ground in the City of Birmingham large enough to accommodate the number of people who would be entitled to attend?

Wing Commander Bullus: That is the answer to my hon. Friend.
The local elections should decide the choice of the electors. It is wrong that the considered opinion of a democratically elected council, advised by the town clerk and other council officers, should be overruled by a very few electors who bother to turn up at a town meeting. As the hon. Gentleman pointed out, the questions on a poll sheet are very often difficult to understand and the costs of a poll are heavy for a very small result.
I do not want to bore the House with a lot of figures, but I have some figures showing that in recent years there have been very small attendances at town meetings and that the highest percentage for a poll is 25. In Nottingham, the average over a period of 20 years has been as low as 7 per cent. In regard to town meetings, in three polls promoted by the Corporation of Sheffield, the attendances were 100 people, less than 100 and about 500 people, respectively. In Liverpool in 1933, 175 electors attended, and for a poll in 1949 only 20 attended. At Bristol


in 1949, about 50 attended, and in 1950 less than 100. In Brighton, on two occasions, the attendances were 215 and 106. At Bradford, about 500 attended, and at Kingston-upon-Hull, on two occasions, 350 and 393, a very small percentage of those entitled to vote.
Finally, I ask that the conclusions of three independent Commissions be fairly considered. In the first instance, the Royal Commission on Local Government in 1929, after considering substantial evidence on the subject, expressed the view that a case had been made, in relation to meetings of electors and polls, for their abolition. Secondly, when the subject was considered by the Local Government and Public Health Consolidation Committee, whose instance the Bill which became the Local Government Act, 1939, was drafted, the Committee stated that it was—
entirely in favour of the recommendation of the Royal Commission.
Thirdly, much evidence on the subject was given, as the hon. Gentleman said, to the Joint Committee of the House of Commons on Private Bill procedure, which reported in May, 1955. This Committee concurred with the views of the Royal Commission and recommended that legislation should be introduced to abolish town meetings and town's polls.
I repeat that I think the arguments are unanswerable. I know that a large number of my hon. Friends oppose this proposal, but many Tories also support my view. A final pertinent footnote is a letter from the town clerk of the Borough of Wembley, half of which I have the honour to represent in this House, and the Council of which is composed predominantly of Tories, who writes:
The Borough Council strongly supports the efforts that are being made to repeal these provisions, and I have been requested to write to you to solicit your support in this connection.
I only hope that we may have the Government's support, or at any rate their benevolent neutrality, on this Motion. I commend the Motion with confidence to the House and ask for its support.

11.47 a.m.

Mr. Ede: I beg to support the Motion. Seeing the hon. Member for Exeter (Mr. Dudley Williams) and the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Mr. Gurden) in

their places, and recollecting the length at which they produced arguments to the Committee on the Bill which the hon. and gallant Member for Wembley, North (Wing-Commander Bullus) introduced, I do not propose to speak long, because I would not wish to deprive them of the joy of hearing their own voices.

Mr. Martin Lindsay: Me?

Mr. Ede: I did not include the hon. Member. I said the hon. Member for Exeter and the hon. Member for Selly Oak, who is sitting behind the hon. Gentleman. I am always more joyful over one sinner that repenteth than over the 99 who are so stubborn that they can never repent.
I believe that this Motion is reasonable in a country which believes in representative government. The electors elect a council and, in my experience, they generally get the council they deserve. At any rate, it is their act, and they have given these people this authority for the time being. After all, in boroughs there is an annual election, and in most urban districts there is also an annual election at which the electors can make their views perfectly well-known if, in their opinion, those whom they have elected have exceeded what the electors wished them to do. Therefore, just as I object to the referendum, which is not a success in Switzerland or anywhere else where it has been tried, so I object to this power, which has become quite unworkable in modern English local government, in the British climate, in the English climate, the Birmingham climate and the Manchester climate.
The hon. Member for Exeter suggests that if there is not a hall big enough a football ground would be the place to hold the meeting, which 750,000 people are entitled to attend. How does any one determine, when we have got 750,000 people there, that they are only electors who are entitled to vote? It has been known on occasion for people to have been introduced by one side or the other into a town meeting who were not electors and were not entitled to vote at it. There is no power to check that at all.

Mr. V. Yates: We have no football ground big enough.

Mr. Ede: I suppose that the answer would be to put up some sort of gallery over part of the ground and have some


people above and some below and to be careful that one had those to whom one objected on top so that one could let them down.

Mr. Denis Howell: Who would referee this event?

Mr. Ede: My hon. Friend is a qualified referee. I should leave it to him. If I were mayor I would umpire between the two sides and be careful that no one questioned my authority.
I understand that town meetings were first established in 1858 as a result of a local government Measure at a time when English local government was just beginning to develop. Before the Act of 1867 which enfranchised the working people in the towns, a very limited section of the community only were able to attend the meeting as of right. To try to perpetuate this 100 years later is to fail to take account of the increase in the electorate, of the increase in the demands on the services of local authorities, and of the great advantage that these Private Bills promoted by corporations have been in the development of local government.
It is the history of the matter that one borough after another and one local authority after another applies for a specific power to deal with a problem which has arisen in its locality. If a sufficient number of boroughs were successful in the old days, the Government of the day would promote a Public Health Act (Amendment) Bill, which would confer that power generally, or it would make it an adoptive proposal which local authorities could adopt after advertising and possibly holding a local inquiry so as to avoid the necessity of promoting further Bills.
I should like to comment on two matters in the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Mr. Usborne). When the proposal to promote a Bill comes before the town council it has to be carried, if it is carried at all, by an absolute majority of the council, irrespective of the number present on that occasion. When I was chairman of Surrey County Council, which had 104 members, I had to be sure and certify that the hands held up in favour of a Bill were 53, that is, an absolute majority of the whole council, no matter how many might be present.

Mr. Glenvil Hall: I understand that that resolution must be passed on two separate occasions.

Mr. Ede: I was coming to that, but I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for being my memory as well as my mentor.
One thing which the hon. Member for Yardley said alarmed me. He said that an hon. Member could go and see one of the members of the Committee and nobble him. Whether it is within the Standing Orders or not, in my view that would be a highly reprehensible proceeding.

Mr. Usborne: I understand that any evidence that may be sent to the Minister of Housing and Local Government is forwarded by him to the members of the Select Committee. Therefore, if there are any objections in that evidence, he nobbles the members. Why should we not be entitled to do likewise?

Mr. Ede: I regard information given to the Minister and placed before the Committee as a whole—not decided in the Smoking Rooms or the less reputable bars of the place—as in an entirely different category. The four hon. Members sit in a judicial capacity and they have to listen to evidence, which I understand is given on oath. Whilst I do not often frequent the Smoking Room, I hear a great deal of conversation in the Tea Room, which I doubt would be repeated if hon. Members participating in it were placed on oath before the conversation started.
It would be very wrong if the idea got out that there is no need to hold town meetings because one could see one's Member of Parliament and he would see one of the members of the Committee and make it all right from the point of view that one held. I do not think that is in accordance with either Standing Orders or the tradition of the House, and I should be very reluctant to have it thought that such influence could be brought to bear on the passing of a Private Bill through a Committee, which ought to be above any suggestion that it decides the matter on anything but the evidence which it hears.

Mr. Usborne: I fully understand my right hon. Friend's point, but there is a curious anomaly attached to this matter.


Hon. Members in the House are entitled to object to a Private Bill. If they do that systematically the Chairman of Ways and Means has to arrange eventually for a debate at 7 o'clock. It is open then to hon. Members to move Resolutions which are Instructions to the Select Committee, and in the debate they are entitled to express their views. Presumably, members of the Select Committee are expected to pay some attention to the views expressed by hon. Members in a debate of that kind in the House.

Mr. Ede: If the Committee receives Instructions from the House, it has to obey them. The Committee is merely a creature of the House. What is said in debate is said in public. Everybody hears it and it can be contradicted. I served on a Select Committee on Private Bills in my early days in the House. I would not regard anything said in debates on Second Reading, unless it were followed by an Instruction, as entitled to outweigh the evidence which members of the Committee hear on oath. That is the duty which those members have to discharge.
This provision is an anomaly which may have been useful in the early days of extended local government in 1858, but it has long outlived its usefulness. The figures quoted by the hon. and gallant Member for Wembley, North indicate that it is not anything that is greatly prized by the electorate, because they tend to ignore it. I have attended several town meetings, but I have never seen an audience even of the size which the hon. and gallant Member mentioned. I hope that the House will pass the Motion and that the Minister of Housing and Local Government will find it possible in the near future to promote a Bill to remove this anomaly from English local government law.

12 noon.

Mr. Barnett Janner: After the excellent speeches we have heard, I do not propose to detain the House long. However, it is important that on this matter we should have the opinion and experience of our various constituencies to enable the House to reach a proper conclusion on the points raised.
As a preliminary, may I say that I and all my colleagues on both sides of the House are anxious that nothing should happen which would detract from the rights of citizens to express their opinions and for those opinions to be properly considered by those who represent them. On the other hand, situations arise which result in the ridiculous position of having the view of a few who decide to attend a meeting, who in no sense represent a cross-section of the electorate, let alone the electorate as a whole.

Mr. Gurden: Would the hon. Gentleman tell us the figure which he considers to be the minimum necessary to determine the opinion of the electors? Certain figures have been quoted showing that towns' polls represent only 3 per cent. or 4 per cent, Yet some councillors are elected on a poll of 16 per cent. or 17 per cent.

Mr. Janner: I know that in some cases people may be elected to councils on a comparatively small percentage of electors voting. Unfortunately, technically at any rate, we cannot do without local councils, so it may be that some councillors are returned on a small percentage of voting if the proper number of electors do not choose to vote. It is unfortunate, and it is wrong. In some countries a penalty is imposed on electors who do not vote. However, two sets of conditions which are wrong do not make a right.
The experience in Leicester leads one to the conclusion that it is useless to continue this formality of meetings and polls, which has become almost a farce. At the time of the promotion of the Leicester Corporation Bill, 1956, the total number of local government electors on the register was 202,787. It was estimated that 500 local government electors were present at the meeting. A number of these were members of associations. The meeting approved all the Clauses in the Bill with one exception. Subsequently requisitions were deposited for a poll of electors on four Clauses, one of which was the Clause disapproved of at the town meeting. The total number of electors voting at the town's poll was 2,860, which is approximately 1·4 per cent. The cost of the poll was £1,500 or 10s. a vote. The results of the poll confirmed the decisions at the town meeting.
That is a clear example of the absurdity of continuing this co-called democratic procedure. It is not really democracy when only 1·4 per cent. of the population are sufficiently interested to do something. It is a very different thing in the case of a town election, where in some cases 60 per cent. or 70 per cent. of people decide who shall be returned. Certainly it is never as low as 1·4 per cent. in that case.

Mr. Gurden: Might it not be the case that the other people stayed away because they were apathetic and did not mind if the proposals went through? If there had been some Clauses which the public had not liked or wanted, might not a higher percentage have attended the meeting and have rejected the proposals?

Mr. Janner: I was trying to indicate that this position is general. The various commissions which have sat on this subject came to precisely the same conclusion, but I will not go into the details which have been dealt with already.
The hon. Gentleman has asked whether, in the event of an important matter being at issue, things might not be different. There is no indication of this, certainly from the meetings held during the period this procedure has been in existence, but even assuming that there is one righteous person in Sodom and Gomorrah—which is obviously his argument—it does not mean that either he or a large number of electors wanting something could not get that brought to the notice of the House or to the notice of their Members, or to the notice of whoever they wished to consider the position.
It is not a question of Smoking Room talk, as has been suggested. Incidentally, even a smoking room is not bad for this purpose sometimes. I go into the Smoking Room of the House of Commons only occasionally, but I gather that sometimes ideas emerge there of great use to the Government or to the Opposition and sometimes of great use to the country. The fact is that in this country there is open access to Members of Parliament and people take advantage of this. Hon. Members receive many communications on matters in which people are interested. Again, there is the

evidence on the matters at issue taken before a judicial tribunal, which is important. I understand that there are four people on this tribunal. In our courts, of course, often one person, a judge, has great powers and exercises them judicially in a manner of which most people approve.
So there are plenty of safeguards and there is ample opportunity for the individual to exercise his right to express himself. I think it is gilding the lily to suggest that town meetings should be allowed to continue purely because they have been in existence for a long time and because that so-called freedom should not be taken away from us. I do not believe it is freedom to give licence to a few people. The House knows that sometimes only a few determined people will attend even trade union meetings and express their views on proposals which the majority do not want but are indifferent about. I have always been concerned about preserving civil liberties and rights, but the continuance of these meetings and polls is going too far. It is a waste of money and time and it does not serve any useful purpose.

12.10 p.m.

Mr. Frank McLeavy: I should like briefly to support the Motion. I think that anyone who has had years of connection with local authorities will realise how out-of-date the present regulations are. I think it would be fair to say that they are as much out of date as the old toll gates. I believe that their value has been diminished by the increased control of the central authority. Local authorities these days are so much controlled by Parliament that any major scheme is subject to Government sanction in one way or another.
The general experience of local authorities is that both town meetings and polls are no longer of value to the general ratepayer. They certainly do not now arouse any real public interest. Wherever a town meeting or a town's poll takes place there is an atmosphere of apathy and disinterestedness, which indicates that the idea of town meetings or towns' polls is something which has been outgrown by our development of national and local government.
Let me cite one case. In connection with the Bradford Corporation Bill which


is now before the House, a town meeting was held in December last. The number of persons at the meeting was approximately 30. They were composed mainly of members of the council, the Press and officials. I ask the House quite frankly: why should busy people—I am speaking of the councillors who give their time free to administering local government—be compelled to waste valuable time on matters upon which the public have very little interest? I suggest that it is time that Parliament wiped away all this legislation which is so out-of-date and so out of accord with the ideas of modern government.

Mr. Gurden: The hon. Gentleman says that there is a lack of public interest and that important, busy people have to attend these meetings. What would he say about city councillors who go to election meetings themselves and organise them? They get even less attendance. Is that indicative of a waste of time?

Mr. McLeavy: That is a frivolous argument. The hon. Member knows that a political meeting is organised at the decision of the people who want to hold the meeting. It is an entirely different matter to make it a statutory condition that because a responsible local authority is promoting a Bill it should necessarily have to hold a town meeting, have to go through the Bill Clause by Clause and take a vote at the meeting which in no sense of the word could be regarded as representative of the electors of the authority concerned.

Mr. Janner: May I remind my hon. Friend that the experience of everyone nowadays is that even meetings for political purposes are reduced to a minimum because people do not attend them.

Mr. McLeavy: I do not want to take too long, because there are other Motions for consideration today. To my mind, the points of substance arising from this Motion are whether these provisions are of public value and whether they really serve the purpose for which they were intended. These are points which I think we ought to take into consideration in coming to a decision this morning.
There are, I think, three substantial protections at the moment, adequate to meet all reasonable requirements. The first, the ratepayers can put forward their

objections in writing to the Minister concerned. They can place their views before their Members of Parliament and their local councillors. Industrial firms have precisely the same facilities as ordinary ratepayers, except that they have an additional advantage. If they want to oppose a Bill, or a Clause in it, they have the financial resources whereby they can petition against the Bill and be represented by counsel when the Bill is considered by the Select Committee.
Secondly, if the Government feel that, either on the representations made by ratepayers or others or as a result of their own examination of the Bill, the Bill is undesirable, or requires Amendment, they can either ensure the rejection of the Bill or that the Amendments are made which are in accord with Government policy.
Thirdly, the Select Committee which examines the Bill considers carefully the representations which are made to it by counsel on behalf of the various interests. The Committee is, in the main, composed of Members of Parliament who have had considerable experience of local government. They are people with a very broad outlook upon these matters. Hon. Members who have sat on these Committees know very well the thorough way in which they examine Bills Clause by Clause. I do not recollect one case where the members of a Committee upstairs, examining a Bill, have not paid due regard to the representations which have been made to them.
We ought to be very proud of local authority administration. I have known awful rows to arise in local government over the purchase of even a carpet for the town clerk's room. The matter has become a very big issue. But in Parliament we agree on the nod to the expenditure of millions of pounds of taxpayers' money and hardly an hon. Member knows the purpose for which the money is to be used. In local government, in spite of all its faults and difficulties, we have a system whereby the spending of every shilling is carefully analysed by the councillors, and it is very important that it should be so.
If any radical changes are necessary in our governmental system, they are in respect of Parliamentary lack of supervision over expenditure which may be small from the Parliamentary point of view rather than restriction of the power


of local authorities. I should like Parliament to consider some day how far it is possible for Members of Parliament to control the expenditure of Government Departments in a way similar to that in which local authorities control the expenditure of their departments. That would be of very considerable benefit to Parliament and the taxpayers.
I hope that we shall be told today that the Government are prepared to accept the Motion in the spirit in which it has been moved, and I hope that they will give an assurance that they will be willing, as soon as an occasion arises, to implement the principles underlying it.

12.22 p.m.

Mr. Harold Gurden: I am glad the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Mr. Usborne) has returned to the Chamber after a temporary absence. He referred to me in his speech, and he also approached me on this matter the other day.
I appreciate the fairly moderate terms in which the hon. Member put his case, and particularly his reference to town meetings. I entirely agree with what he said about town meetings. It has never been part of my case, or the case of anyone I know, that town meetings should be decisive in their conclusion or should have any weight, although I think it is essential that the citizens should have the right to be heard by their aldermen and councillors before a Bill is sent to the House. I notice that his hon. Friends did not all agree with the hon. Member on that point.
The hon. Member went a stage further and said that he felt so strongly about this that he had indulged in objecting to Bills, both good and bad—those are my words; I assume there were some good ones as well as some bad ones—purely because of spite—

Mr. Usborne: There is no question of spite at all. It is the privilege of a Member of Parliament, if he has something to say which is relevant to a corporation Bill, to object to its passage on the nod so that there may be a debate and he shall have the right to air his views.

Mr. Gurden: Then I apologise to some extent to the hon. Member, because I understood that he did this to show his disgust for the way in which the matter had been dealt with at an earlier stage.
That brings me to my other point. The hon. Member voluntarily came to me and informed me—I am grateful for it; it is more than the hon. Member for Birmingham, All Saints (Mr. D. Howell) did—that he intended to object to a Bill sponsored by me. That is at any rate an advance on the attitude of the hon. Member for All Saints. The Bill to which I refer—it has reference to towns' polls and town meetings—was thoroughly agreed between the hon. Member for All Saints and myself at a conference with members of the Socialist-controlled City Council of Birmingham. It is a Bill which the Birmingham City councillors want. It is being objected to now purely, so I am informed, on personal grounds. When this sort of thing goes on in the House of Commons it is important to have towns' polls and town meetings.

Mr. D. Howell: What is the hon. Member talking about?

Mr. Gurden: It is wrong that good Bills, completely non-controversial Bills which are agreed by all and which are very important to Birmingham, should be stopped simply because one or two hon. Members opposite—I admit there are only one or two—do not like my attitude to this matter.
I consider that I have a serious and sincere case on this matter, whereas in the instance of my Bill there is no case at all for venting spleen in this way. I mention this only because it has been said that it is intended at 4 p.m. today for the fourth time to object to Bills for no other reason than the fact that I take up the attitude which I do on this matter.

Mr. Howell: A perfectly valid reason.

Mr. Gurden: I am prepared to put my case on this matter, for it is a sincere one, but in the other instance there is no case at all.
The hon. Member for Yardley has said that he objects to such Bills and intends to object to my Bill today so that he may put his point of view. He had a perfectly good opportunity to put his point of view during the Second Reading debate a few weeks ago. He was notified of the debate by the Order Paper and also by the town clerk. [Interruption.] It may well be, Mr. Speaker, that you think that


my speech is getting rather wide of the remark, but it relates to a Bill which could well have been a Private Bill sponsored by the Birmingham Corporation.

Mr. Howell: It should be.

Mr. Gurden: I presented the Bill for Second Reading because this represented the quicker method. There could well have been a town's poll on this matter. In fact, with the agreement of the hon. Member for All Saints—

Mr. Howell: No.

Mr. Gurden: —I presented a Bill on a Friday—

Mr. Howell: Mr. Howell rose—

Mr. V. Yates: On a point of order. Is it in order for the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Mr. Gurden) to indulge in a long argument about another Bill which is coming up later today?

Mr. Speaker: I was wondering what Bill the hon. Member for Selly Oak was talking about, but if it is the Bill which I now understand it to be, it is an Order of the Day and it is out of order to anticipate discussion on a Bill which appears later on the Order Paper. The hon. Member should come a little nearer to the Motion.

Mr. Howell: Further to that point of order. Two or three times the hon. Member has referred to me and has said that I have agreed with him about something. That has not been true. Would you kindly ask him to speak for himself and not to speak for me?

Mr. Gurden: I bow to your Ruling, Mr. Speaker. The point is arguable, but the matter is connected with the Motion and I thought that discussion of it might be acceptable.
I have tried to show that the hon. Member for Yardley and some of his hon. Friends, perhaps only a few, are not concerned with helping Birmingham—and Birmingham is named in the Motion—

Mr. V. Yates: Stick to the Motion.

Mr. Gurden: I am seeking to show that hon. Members are not concerned with helping Birmingham or they would

have facilitated the passage of a Bill which I put forward.
The public has several times rejected Private Bills of the Birmingham Corporation and some Clauses of such Bills, I think rightly. Although in many cases the polls were small, those taking part were the people who had taken the trouble to consider what the Bills meant. There were several thousands of them, and it was not a matter of a few hundred people, or a few city councillors, or M.P.s. The people who have voted have taken the trouble to go to the poll and register their objections.
It has been part of the case of hon. Members opposite today that this part of our democracy is out-dated and should be regarded in the light of modern circumstances. I concede that at once, and I agree with what the hon. Member for Yardley said about meetings. That is my personal opinion, and some of my hon. Friends would not go so far. I concede that, with the tremendous growth of borough councils, we must consider this old law in the circumstances of the day.
The Royal Commission took that view in 1929, and the position today is probably worse than it was then, since the populations of towns are now even bigger. However, since 1945 something has happened which has been of extreme importance, and if we throw away the procedure of town meetings and towns' polls, we must replace it with something to protect the public against the sort of Bill which has been brought forward since 1945.
Since 1945, for the first time, Bills of this kind have contained Socialist doctrine. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."]

Mr. Howell: Is that the objection? Is it that Conservatism is all right and Socialism all wrong?

Mr. Gurden: No. Municipalisation, nationalisation through the back door, has been introduced, as I shall seek to show, and that is why the public has recently shown a greater interest in the requisitioning of polls. Before 1945, the requisitioning of polls was nothing like as extensive as it is today. There was no need. Polls were not requisitioned because the powers sought were thought to be reasonable. For the first time, towns' polls are of some use to the


people in giving them a chance to demonstrate to the town councillors what they want done. That is their right and not ours and not the right of the city councillors. This aspect of democracy should not be removed without careful consideration.

Mr. Usborne: The hon. Member is mixing two entirely different principles. A corporation Bill is a series of requests by one legislative assembly, the local one, to another, the superior and sovereign legislative assembly, namely, the House of Commons, for more delegated powers. The House of Commons decides whether to delegate those powers or not. It is not a matter of corporation Bills being a series of legislative acts in themselves.

Mr. Gurden: That intervention helps my case. Let the hon. Member suppose that it is possible at some future date for some of his hon. Friends to take office. I remind him that some of them may be of the extreme Left.

Mr. Usborne: Why not?

Mr. Gurden: They might prefer the system used behind the Iron Curtain. One can imagine all sorts of things happening. Such a Government might tell a local authority that it could not put that authority's views on municipalisation and municipal trading in a General Election programme, but that if the authority submitted a Private Bill the Government would be prepared to pass it. Thus, if there were no longer a town's poll, there would be nothing to stop such a Bill coming before the House and being passed.

Mr. Howell: What about the Lords?

Mr. Gurden: I have no doubt that the hon. Member for All Saints would try to see that that, too, was removed, since that would be the next step.
Whatever is said by hon. Members opposite about town meetings, let us recognise that it is a means of free speech which the electors do not normally have.

Mr. Usborne: Why?

Mr. Gurden: If the electors organise a town meeting for themselves to protest against corporation Bills, it would be fairly certain that the town clerk, the aldermen and city councillors would not

attend, because they would not like the fair criticism which would be levelled at them.

Mr. Usborne: I do not know what the hon. Member is talking about.

Mr. Gurden: I remind the hon. Member that I have been to such meetings in the Birmingham Town Hall and that, as far as I know, he has never been to such a meeting.

Mr. Usborne: I was saying that I could not understand what the hon. Member was talking about, unless he was trying to explain to me that Tory councillors were so frightened of the electors that they would not attend meetings to hear criticisms of themselves.

Mr. Gurden: I was saying that if we were to take away the statutory obligation to hold meetings at which councillors and aldermen had to be present to listen to what was being said by the public, they would not attend. They would leave the public to their own devices, with Mr. Prescott and the like.
Let us consider some of the Bills which have been promoted by the Birmingham Council, which is under Socialist control, and see what the public have a right to object to at a poll or meeting. One Bill provided that the city council should have the power to trade in house furniture. It might well be possible for a city council to make an agreement with the tenants of municipal houses providing that those tenants could not install anything but municipal furniture in their houses. If that was not a possibility, why did the council want the power to trade in house furniture? What chance would it stand against the usual traders competing against it? The Co-operative society is a very big handler of furniture in Birmingham. If I happened to be correct about the intentions of the council, how many people in the furniture industry could be put out of business in Birmingham?
It may be that I should address my remarks more particularly to my hon. Friends in this matter, because hon. Members opposite probably agree that furniture should be sold only by municipal corporations.

Mr. Coldrick: I may agree with the hon. Member in some of the remarks he is making, but


does not he agree that even if the Motion were accepted the people who object fundamentally to these practices would organise meetings and pay for them, in order to protest? Is not the real objection that, as things happen today—as I know from my knowledge of Bristol—corporations may be compelled to organise such meetings, at which about thirteen people turn up, and over £1,500 is spent in organisation? This works out at over £100 for each person attending. Is not that a far more serious matter than the one to which the hon. Member is now referring?

Mr. Gurden: The hon. Member quoted a figure of £1,500. I have never heard of such a meeting costing anything like that. Birmingham is an extremely large city, but I do not think that the hon. Member for Yardley suggested that it costs £1,500 to organise one of these meetings. It has never cost £1,500 to organise a meeting held in the Birmingham Town Hall, which is the usual place for these meetings. I have never seen a bill presented by the city council for that amount. I do not know whether the hon. Member for Bristol, North-East (Mr. Coldrick) was in the House earlier, when I said that so long as there was a statutory obligation to hold such meetings, at which the councillors, aldermen and the town clerk had to listen to the various arguments, I was quite content that they should not be decisive.

Mr. Ede: Why punish the town clerks like that?

Mr. Gurden: I am not naming Birmingham specifically, but in some cases the town clerk is the niggers in the woodpile. The fact that the Association of Municipal Corporations supports this Motion may be due largely to the influence of town clerks. I have seen representations from town clerks in support of the Motion.

Mr. Dudley Williams: My hon. Friend is quite correct. In fact, the Association put this matter clearly to the councils. They have not voted on it. It has not been on the agenda, and it is a racket by the Association to make it easier to put across Socialist legislation of the type referred to by my hon. Friend.

Mr. Glenvil Hall: Do I understand the hon. Member to say that the town clerk

of Birmingham supports the point of view that he is now putting forward?

Mr. Gurden: The town clerk of Birmingham has to put it on paper that he supports the Motion, but he is doing so as town clerk under the instructions of the Socialist-controlled City Council. What the town clerk himself thinks I do not know, and I would not ask him.
I have already mentioned that one of the Bills promoted dealt with trading in furniture. Another dealt with the manufacture of motor-bus bodies. Just imagine a corporation manufacturing motor-bus bodies. Some of the workmen in the motor-bus body industry, and certainly the manufacturers of bus bodies, did not like this. They have always manufactured perfectly good bus bodies, so why should a municipality start to trade in them? Is not this just Socialist doctrine for nationalisation through the back door?
This House would not pass such a Bill. The Corporation tried to do it by way of the back door, through a Private Bill, and the Birmingham people said, "We do not want this," so the Corporation was not able to promote the Bill. One hon. Member opposite has said that the House votes thousands of pounds without a thought.

Mr. C. Pannell: The hon. Member could not have heard the speech of his hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Wembley, North (Wing Commander Bullus), who was once a member of the Leeds Corporation. The hon. and gallant Gentleman told us how, after the citizens of Leeds, at a town meeting had voted to promote a Bill in this House, he organised opposition and managed to get four Clauses struck out here. I am not criticising the hon. Member, but the Government have had a majority since 1951, and without the expense of a towns' meeting those Clauses would probably have been struck out anyway.

Mr. Gurden: That is true, but in some instances Clauses have got past this House. I am saying that if we had a Socialist Government at some future date, and the legislation that they were prepared to pass according to their programme at the General Election did not go far enough for the Socialists in a certain town—Birmingham, perhaps—the Government could say, "All right, send us a Private Bill. We are in a


majority, and we will see that our chaps do not throw this out." It is a movement towards the Iron Curtain, prior to going through it.

Mr. Pannell: A bus body is not an Iron Curtain.

Mr. Gurden: I have instanced only two cases, and they are by no means the worst. There are lots more. In another case, the city council wanted power to purchase compulsorily land for redevelopment purposes without reference to this House. The Town and Country Planning Acts were in existence and the public did not want to delegate such important powers to a municipal corporation. The Birmingham City Corporation wanted this power and the public struck it out. What is wrong with that?
Birmingham also wanted powers to establish a reserve fund for the civic restaurant undertaking. What they really wanted was the power to make a loss and to subsidise it out of the rates.

Mr. D. Howell: It so happens that at that time I was chairman of the Birmingham City Council catering committee.

Mr. Gurden: Indeed the hon. Gentleman was.

Mr. Howell: Perhaps the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Mr. Gurden) will not speak inaccuracies. If he will contain himself for a moment, I should like to point out that the legislation on the Statute Book stipulates that civic restaurants cannot make a loss. If they make a loss for three consecutive years they have to be closed down unless specially exempted by the appropriate Minister. That is the law of the land. We could not in a local Bill change the statutory law of this land, as the hon. Gentleman knows.
What we are saying is that although we do not make a loss—we have never made a loss, and we have no intention of doing so—at the same time there is the ridiculous situation that when we make a profit we cannot carry it to a sinking fund in order to develop the business. According to the law as it now stands, we can make neither a loss nor a profit. We have succeeded in walking on that financial tightrope for ten years without the help of the hon. Gentleman or any of his hon. Friends. Perhaps he will speak about things that he knows something about.

Mr. Gurden: There is the other point of view. I am saying that it was a deep-laid plot. I say that most municipal trading undertakings in Birmingham have lost money and are subsidised by the rates.

Mr. Howell: None of them has.

Mr. Gurden: Indeed they have.

Mr. Howell: Mention one.

Mr. Gurden: The civic restaurants sought to do precisely that.

Mr. Howell: That is utter bunkum.

Mr. Gurden: One of the largest powers which the Corporation has is to be a landlord of municipal houses. The Corporation certainly loses enough money doing that. The ratepayers subsidise municipal tenants, at the expense of the less well-off people, to the extent of 10d. to 1s. in the £ on the rates. This is what the civic restaurant department, under the chairmanship of the hon. Member for All Saints, intended to do. It wanted to subsidise civic catering because the law said—

Mr. Howell: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. May I seek your protection? The law is that civic restaurants are not allowed to make a loss. Is it in order for the hon. Member to impugn my motives as chairman of that committee and as a Member of this House by saying that by devious means I tried to defeat the law of the land?

Mr. Speaker: I am somewhat at a loss in this eddy of Birmingham politics. The hon. Member who is addressing the House should be careful not to impute motives, but I do not think he did impute any motive of a dishonourable kind to the hon. Member for All Saints. He is really giving his opinion that there was a political motive, but a political motive need not be dishonourable.

Mr. Garden: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. C. Pannell: It is only muddleheadedness.

Mr. Gurden: If I did imply anything dishonourable I certainly withdraw it. I agree that it would be wrong to do that. It is the political doctrine which I was opposing and to which I wish to draw attention.
A Clause in another Bill sought power to set up a Corporation insurance fund which the experts told us would certainly lose money for the Corporation and which would be an unwise power to have. Another power which was sought—

Mr. C. Pannell: I do not wish to keep interrupting the hon. Gentleman, but perhaps this is a good time to do so as he is citing cases. Cases should be answered as they are mentioned. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison) brought in a Bill to allow local authorities to set up insurance funds on behalf of the Urban District Councils Association. The Government of the day had that struck out. There is no doubt that if Birmingham had been advised to put this Clause in it would have been put in with the certainty that it would have been struck out. Parliament would not have allowed that Clause to stand.

Mr. Gurden: That intervention is all very well, but I think I have already pointed out that the hon. Gentleman has more confidence in what is likely to be done by this House than I have. I prefer people to have their own rights which have been given to them under our democratic system. It is the people's rights that we are discussing. These were never the councils' rights. It is the people's right to express their opinion at a poll and at a meeting. We are not talking about our rights in this House or about councillors' rights.
Those who support this Motion wish to deprive the people of one of their rights. I have not the same confidence that some people may have in what is done in this House. I admit that if some of the hon. Members of the Opposition benches were a representative sample of the sort of people there would always be in the party opposite I might have a different opinion, but I have not got that confidence. I doubt very much, if hon. Members opposite searched their hearts, whether they would have such confidence in some of the elements to which I have referred.
May I refer to another very important power which the Birmingham City Council sought to have? That was to modify or even discharge existing restrictive covenants. This is very serious. Some very good citizens of Birmingham have

given land to the city. The Cadbury family have given a lot of land to the city, more often than not free of charge, as a gift to the citizens. When some of these people have died they have been under the impression that the covenants they made would be honoured. But what did the Birmingham City Council want? It wanted the power to annul these covenants. Only a few weeks ago a case was mentioned in the Birmingham Press of a former Lord Mayor who referred to this terrible state of affairs, in which a man or woman enters into a binding covenant with the corporation to give land to the city and then the corporation wants to scrap the covenant as soon as the man or woman dies. Sometimes the corporation even says to such people while they are still alive. "May we scrap the covenant?" In this case the corporation wanted to do it by means of a Private Bill.

Mr. C. Pannell: Do they want a bypass to the cemetery or something?

Mr. Gurden: The Birmingham people say. "Away with this. We are not going to have these covenants scrapped by a Socialist city council."

Mr. D. Howell: Come off it.

Mr. Gurden: So far as I am aware, the Birmingham people never wanted to do anything of the sort.

Mr. V. Yates: Would the hon. Member suggest that if a town meeting in Birmingham had rejected the idea of a municipal bank that would have been a good thing?

Mr. Gurden: It may or it may not have been a wise thing. I must agree that the municipal bank has proved a good thing. There was no poll requisitioned on that occasion. Everyone thought it was a reasonable thing to do.

Mr. Yates: It was a Socialist measure.

Mr. Gurden: There could well have been a poll, but the people agreed that it was a good thing to have. This municipal bank is not a bank in the ordinary sense of the term, something which trades against Lloyds Bank or the Midland Bank. It is a savings bank.

Mr. Yates: It was Socialist legislation.

Mr. Gurden: It may well be that the hon. Member likes to call it Socialist legislation. I do not mind. It has proved a very good institution and something that nobody minds about. It has not affected the competitive influences in the banking worlds, and people, even the man who thought it up—Mr. Chamberlain—still banked with the other banks.

Mr. Howell: Mr. Howell rose—

Mr. Gurden: I will give only one more instance of the powers which have been sought by the Birmingham authority, if the hon. Member for All Saints can possibly contain himself instead of holding another meeting on the other side of the House, and if he will get up to make an interjection—

Mr. Howell: I tried to interject, but the hon. Member would not give way.

Mr. Dudley Williams: My hon. Friend has given way several times.

Mr. Howell: He has, and I pay tribute to him for that. But on this occasion he probably did not see me rise.
The hon. Gentleman said that Mr. Joseph Chamberlain thought up the idea of a municipal bank. For the record, I wish to say that he did no such thing. It was Councillor Eldred Hallas, the one Socialist member of the then Birmingham City Council who, in splendid isolation, thought up the idea which was taken over by the Chamberlains with the agreement of all parties in the city.

Mr. Gurden: I shall have to concede the point, because I must admit that I did not look it up. Whatever the situation, and whoever thought up the idea of a municipal bank, I have no doubt that the intention—indeed it was laid down—was not to trade against the ordinary banks by the use of cheques and the like—

Notice taken that 40 Members were not present;

House counted, and, 40 Members being present—

1.5 p.m.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Sir Charles MacAndrew): Mr. Gurden.

Mr. C. Pannell: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. Will you tell me

whether the hon. Member for Exeter (Mr. Dudley Williams) was included in the count of hon. Members before he left the Chamber? When you counted the hon. Members, did you count the hon. Member for Exeter? I am asking, with respect, for my own information, because some of us think it a rather questionable practice for an hon. Member to draw attention to the fact that there are not 40 Members present and then to leave the Chamber.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: The practice is that after two minutes the Chair counts the House. I counted hon. Members as they came into the Chamber. I did not count hon. Members who were not in the Chamber.

Mr. Pannell: Further to that point of order. If an hon. Member calls attention to the fact that there are not 40 Members present and then leaves the Chamber, is the Motion in order? Is it in order if the hon. Member who sponsored the Motion is not in the Chamber at the time when the count is taken?

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: I cannot count an hon. Member if I cannot see him.

Mr. Pannell: But it was the hon. Member's Motion and he was not in the Chamber. I think, with respect, that that is a matter which should be considered, and I wish to give notice of it so that the Chair may consider it as a matter of order.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: It is not a Motion.

Mr. James Griffiths: If it is not a Motion, surely it is not in accordance with the traditions of the House? When a hon. Member calls attention to the fact that there are not 40 hon. Members present in the Chamber, surely it is bad form if he then leaves the Chamber and uses this procedure as a deliberate device to get the House counted out? Surely that is not in the best Parliamentary tradition?

Mr. Dudley Williams: Since the right hon. Member for Llanelly (Mr. J. Griffiths) has attacked me, I should like to point out before you give a Ruling, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, on whether there


is any question of bad behaviour on my part, that this is repeatedly done and the right hon. Gentleman knows full well that it is done. I suggest that it is just idle pique on the part of right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite to take exception to my action.

Mr. J. Griffiths: It is true that very often on Fridays attention is called to the fact that there are not 40 Members present in the Chamber. My point was that when an hon. Member calls attention to that fact he should not then immediately leave the Chamber, because it shows that he is using this procedure as a device and is not desirous of seeing that 40 hon. Members are present.

Mr. Gurden: May I mention that when I was moving the Second Reading of a Bill in this House three weeks ago an hon. Member opposite did precisely that very thing.

Mr. D. Howell: But did he leave the Chamber?

Mr. Griffiths: Who was he?

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: I counted every hon. Member I could see, whether he was beyond the Bar of the House, or wherever he was, but I cannot count hon. Members whom I do not see. The Clerk at the Table sets the clock going and if there are not 40 hon. Members present after two minutes, the House is adjourned.

Mr. Griffiths: My hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, West (Mr. C. Pannell) asked whether there are precedents in this matter. Would you, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, be good enough to consult Mr. Speaker to find out whether it is in accordance with order and with the best traditions of the House?

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: It happens constantly.

Mr. Howell: It should not.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: That is not for me to say.

Mr. Anthony Greenwood: Would it be true to say that no conduct is questionable where the hon. Member for Exeter (Mr. Dudley Williams) is concerned?

Mr. Ede: For the information of the House and in order to help hon. Members, will you, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, tell us at what stage the counting begins? Does it begin at the expiry of two minutes? I am making no insinuations against the Chair, but it seemed to me, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that you went on counting and when you had counted 40 the business proceeded. May we be assured that while you are counting 40 hon. Members no one goes out of the Chamber? When do you start counting the 40 Members?

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: The way in which I did it just now—my practice is always the same—was that I checked with the Clerk that there were 20 hon. Members in the Chamber, including myself, and the next 20 hon. Members were counted as they were arriving from each end of the Chamber. I even counted hon. Members whom I could see outside the door until I came to 40. I am not a judge of manners or of anything of that kind.

Mr. Ede: Suppose, after you had counted him, an hon. Member left the Chamber for some reason or other. Would he be deducted from the total of 40?

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: Probably I should not notice the hon. Member leave the Chamber, because I should be looking for hon. Members who were coming in.

Mr. Griffiths: May I ask you, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, whether, when you began to count, you counted the hon. Member for Exeter who was present when he asked for the count?

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: I do not think so. I started on this side, the Opposition side. There were more here, and I counted them first. I think I made it about 13 on the Opposition side then. I think that there were about seven more when I began counting.

Mr. George Chetwynd: Would it not be a good idea to start with the hon. Member who calls for a count first to make sure that you include him, Mr. Deputy-Speaker?

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: That might be done. There is nothing laid down about it.

Mr. Pannell: The hon. Member for Exeter would be at the top of the list.

Mr. Gurden: When the count was called I was proceeding to show some of the instances in which Bills presented by the City of Birmingham have been rejected by towns' polls. One of the powers sought was power to authorise the sale by the corporation of petrol, oil, spare parts and repair service facilities at municipal garages and car parks. The public have been seriously criticised for voting down some of the Clauses in Birmingham's Bills. Because they have been criticised, hon. Members opposite wish to take away the public's power altogether. This power was sought—

Mr. Frank McLeavy: Mr. Frank McLeavy (Bradford, East) rose—

Mr. Gurden: Before I give way to the hon. Gentleman, may I ask him if he could stop some of the private committee meetings going on on his side?

Mr. McLeavy: This is not a matter involving Birmingham only. It affects all local authorities throughout the country. We are concerned about the principle, not about any particular authority.

Mr. Gurden: I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving me that point. I was about to show that this is, in fact, just Socialist doctrine. It is Socialist legislation which hon. Gentlemen opposite would like to have so that corporations and municipalities could have power to run garage businesses. This is precisely what Birmingham corporation said it wanted. [An HON. MEMBER: "Why not?"] Exactly. That is the point I was coming to. The people of Birmingham do not consider that the corporation should have this power. They voted it out.

Mr. McLeavy: Is the hon. Gentleman's case now developing purely on the political argument, or is he proceeding on an argument of substance?

Mr. Gurden: Could it not be of substance if it were political? It is hon. Gentlemen opposite and their friends who have made this a political matter. I sought to show earlier that this move began since the war; towns' polls and town meetings were challenged because it had become a political issue. Municipalities were seeking by backdoor

methods to introduce nationalisation. That is why it is a political matter. It is none of my seeking. I dare say that before the war I might well have supported this Motion, but I cannot do so today because of the facts I am now putting before the House.

Mr. McLeavy: If it is purely a Socialist political matter, as the hon. Gentleman implied, how does it come about that his hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Wembley, North (Wing-Commander Bullus) seconded the Motion, with a Tory council in his area?

Mr. Gurden: My hon. and gallant Friend is a delinquent in this matter. He is one of the few who have yet to be converted.

Mr. D. Howell: Is the hon. and gallant Gentleman a "Teddy boy"?

Mr. Gurden: I said that facetiously, of course.
The power which was sought by the Birmingham authority was sought by them as a piece of Socialism. It was not disguised as anything else. That is why it is essential now to retain the town's poll and the town meeting, even if they have to be modernised to suit present events and conditions. They represent the only hope that people have of preventing Socialist authorities from putting through Socialism in the form of municipal legislation.

Mr. Howell: The people can chuck the council out at the next election if they want to.

Mr. Gurden: That is the people's right, but, when they go to vote at a municipal election, they vote always with a clear understanding that they are voting for councillors who will be elected to act and work only within the law and powers given to them by Parliament, not outside. That is why the people at municipal elections do not take these things into account, and that is why these questions must be brought before them in a town's poll. It is a good part of democracy that it should be so.

Mr. McLeavy: Mr. McLeavy rose—

Mr. Stephen McAdden: Can the hon. Member for Bradford, East not leave my hon. Friend alone?

Mr. McLeavy: Is the hon. Member for Selly Oak suggesting that if these provisions are withdrawn local authorities will be able to do something illegal?

Mr. Gurden: The Socialist councillors seek to make these things legal. That is the whole point. It is the people who, by their democratic right, have said that it shall not be legal for the Corporation of Birmingham to have such trading powers.
The people of Birmingham, like many other people, are very hard-working. The living of a man running a small garage, for instance, will be jeopardised if the corporation has such powers. I could cite many instances. There are those who trade in furniture shops and with furniture vans or who run local garages, and the people who do business with those concerns, those independent traders, do not want the corporation to have the power to shut them up and their business away. Some people like to have the right to go and trade with a local garage man.
The hon. Member for Bradford, East (Mr. McLeavy) said that this move may become nation wide, there may be municipal garages or even nationalised garages. He said that there may be legislation for the whole country. That is what I am visualising. This is the sort of things which the towns' polls can stop from the beginning.

Mr. McLeavy: On a point of correction, I should like to say that I said no such thing.

Mr. D. Howell: Of course my hon. Friend did not, but the hon. Gentleman wants to say that he did.

Mr. McLeavy: We should have the truth.

Mr. Gurden: I want to come a little nearer home now. The hon. Member for Yardley, who introduced the Motion, put his case reasonably. He trades in oil-burning apparatus and heating equipment. Many of us in the Midlands know that he has a very good business and produces some very good products. I believe that the business is at Droitwich. I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman has left the Chamber for a moment.
How does the hon. Gentleman know that his business may not be jeopardised if this sort of thing goes on? If munici-

pal trading is extended, may it not be that the corporation, and others perhaps, will wish to take powers to manufacture and sell oil burners and heating equipment. thus affecting his business and livelihood and the livelihood of people who work for him, who like to work for him and who have such a good job, perhaps? May the effects of what he suggests not come a little nearer home? What would his view then be about a town's poll which rejected a corporation Bill of the kind I have described?
That may seem a little far-fetched, but, in the light of what I have been able to show, is it so far-fetched? The corporation attempted to take powers to make bus bodies, to repair motor vehicles, and the like. I believe that the hon. Member for Yardley manufactures parts for motor cars. In that case. they may put him out of business.
I do not think that it is very farfetched to say that these powers have been too far reaching. This is only the beginning of what we may see. Had it not been for the town's poll, the Birmingham Corporation would have had the power to trade in petrol, oil, spare parts and the repairing of motor cars. It might well now have had a big business and have sent into bankruptcy many of the adjoining garages. Can we imagine what the next Bill may possibly bring forward—a Bill to make this a monopoly, as we had with electricity and gas services? May it well not be that Birmingham will seek to have complete monopoly for the sale of petrol and oil and the repairing of motor cars?
I warn the people of Birmingham that the House is discussing today the question of depriving them of the right to decide whether or not such powers can be taken by the corporation. They ought to consider whether or not they require town meetings and towns' polls procedure to be retained. I said earlier that, with certain modifications and with some modernisation in the light of present day circumstances—

Mr. Frederick Wiley: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. The hon. Member for Selly Oak (Mr. Gurden) has just finished the first hour of his speech. Is there no way by which you can indicate to him that on a Friday, which is private Members' day, this is not playing cricket?

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: I have no power to stop speakers. I often wish I had.

Mr. Gurden: There was a method by which hon. Members could have stopped my speech some time ago if they had not entered the House.

Mr. D. Howell: That would not have been playing cricket, either.

Mr. Gurden: I should not have liked it, because I wish to put my case for the people of Birmingham, the thousands who have voted and will go on voting at towns' polls.
It has been said that it should not be possible for a poll to be requisitioned by 100 people. I must concede that. It is out of balance today that 100 people should have the power to requisition a poll for a city of 1 million people. When the number of electors has been counted, let us say at once that that figure does not represent the people who would normally be expected to go to a poll, because never in my memory have any-think like 100 per cent. or even 70 per cent. or 60 per cent, of the electorate gone to the polls in Birmingham on municipal matters. A percentage as high as that has been achieved in probably very few cities.
I concede the point that the requisition of a town's poll should be a little more serious. Perhaps it would not be out of the way if one had to find 500 or even 1,000 names to show that it was a serious requisition by a city of the size of Birmingham. I am only seeking to show that I have an open mind as long as we do not deprive the people of their right. It is a democratic right. In these days when we look at the East and the West and see what happens behind the Iron Curtain, it ought to make us realize—

Mr. Ede: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. The hon. Member for Selly Oak appears now to be returning to where he started. Is there not a rule of the House about repetition?

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: I am glad to say that I was not here when the hon. Member started his speech, so I cannot decide that.

Mr. Howell: You are very lucky, Mr. Deputy-Speaker.

Mr. Gurden: It was not my intention to employ unreasonable methods in debate. I remind the hon. Member for All Saints that he has gone far beyond anything which I am attempting to do now, or have ever done in the past, in the matter of being unreasonable in the House.

Mr. Howell: When?

Mr. Gurden: I have quoted it already. If I repeated it, it could well be said that it was repetition.

Mr. Howell: On a point of order. I must protect myself from the attacks which have been continuing intermittently over the last hour. Is it in order for the hon. Member for Selly Oak to say that I have gone beyond the bounds of reason in the House, without giving chapter and verse so that I can defend myself?

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: Hon. Members on both sides of the House say that to each other almost every day, do they not?

Mr. Howell: I do not say it, Mr. Deputy-Speaker.

Mr. Garden: If I am not ruled out of order, I can very briefly say what it was. Hon. Members who are friends of the hon. Member for All Saints have told me that they have been asked by him, for no sound or good reason, to object to the Private Bill which was put forward last Friday and the Friday before.

Mr. Howell: On a point of order. I am sorry to prolong the speech of the hon. Member for Selly Oak, because it is boring everybody to tears. However, it is necessary for me to defend myself. The hon. Member has given an instance of my unreasonableness in that I am objecting to a Private Bill. Before you took the Chair, it was ruled by Mr. Speaker, in answer to a question by my right hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede), that it was out of order to refer to that Private Bill. If an hon. Member has been ruled out of order before you came into the Chair, is the hon. Member for All Saints not taking advantage of that, especially as he knows that, when I get the opportunity to speak, if he finishes before four o'clock, Mr. Speaker will be in the Chair and will not allow me to refer to it,


because he has already ruled it out of order?

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: The whole point of the debate is that the towns' polls deal with Private Bills, do they not?

Mr. Howell: Yes, but the Bill which the hon. Member has said that I object to is down to be taken at the end of business today. Mr. Speaker ruled this morning that it was out of order for an hon. Member to refer to that Bill. If it was out of order for that hon. Member to refer to the Bill during his speech, the hon. Member is taking an unfair advantage of the House by criticising me in connection with a matter which it is out of order to discuss?

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: All the Bills which come on at four o'clock are Public Bills, introduced by private Members. They are quite different. The Motion deals with Private Bills as such, promoted by corporations following towns' polls and the like.

Mr. Glenvil Hall: The Motion deals with town meetings and towns' polls, not with Private Bills.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: Private Bills make them necessary. It is only because they deal with matters in Private Bills that they have them.

Mr. Ede: Mr. Speaker ruled an hon. Member out of order for alluding to it. Mr. Speaker said that the hon. Member was anticipating a Bill on the Order Paper for the day and he was not entitled to do it several hours—I forget how many hours ago it was said—before the Bill would be called from the Chair.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: One is anticipating if one does that. It is in order to give an instance of a Private Bill when arguing that one does not want a town's poll. That is the whole point of the debate. A town's poll cannot arise except on a matter of that kind.

Mr. Ede: The Bill to which the hon. Member alluded is a Public Bill, not a Private Bill. We believe that the hon. Member introduced a Public Bill so as to dodge Private Bill procedure. Mr. Speaker ruled that out of order, on the ground that any discussion of it was anticipation.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: I should not allow discussion of Public Bills on this. We do not have a town's poll. We do it without one.

Mr. Gurden: I am sorry that the debate has taken this turn, but it was because the hon. Member for All Saints challenged my behaviour.

Mr. McAdden: I have been trying to follow the argument of my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Mr. Gurden). There has been a great deal of interruption, and I am sorry to add to it. If I understand what he was saying aright, it was that he would not object to some revision of the rules about towns' polls. He suggested that it would be reasonable if 1,000 signatures out of a total population of 1 million were obtained. Does my hon. Friend appreciate that such a figure is a considerably higher percentage than the 40 Members who are considered to be necessary to carry on this debate?

Mr. Gurden: That certainly is an important point. I am grateful for my hon. Friend for reinforcing my argument. Many things are done in this House and people are quite satisfied with them, so it appears, when the proportion is quite different from that which hon. Members opposite say is ridiculous.
Birmingham and other cities have managed very well in the past. Until all this idea of municipal trading came up, they had managed very well with a town's polls and town meetings. Southport says that it overcomes its difficulties quite well by negotiating with any member of the public who feels that he has a grievance, in the same way that we and the Ministries try to do when they have letters. Birmingham. as it has known quite well, before presenting Bills, has been told by my colleagues in Birmingham and by myself in the City Council that to present such Bills was only asking for trouble and we would only have to expect that the public would reject them.
If we are to give city councillors more and more power—and they have had a tremendous lot added to them—we must recognise that we are to some extent replacing this House. In the quotations from Bills which have been put forward by Birmingham, I have shown that that is exactly what is intended and that the City Council wants, and always wants, such


extra power. It is a one-sided case. The case has been put by the municipal corporations, supported by the town clerks, writing to hon. Members, by the city councillors and by hon. Members opposite, but no one has been able to speak for these thousands of people who go to the poll and to the meetings.
I contend that we are dealing today with a matter which strikes at the very principles of democracy.

Mr. D. Howell: That is the twenty-first time the hon. Member has said that today.

Mr. Gurden: It may well be that this matter should be the subject at a General Election as to whether the public are satisfied to have taken from them the right, which they have always had, to express their opinion at a town meeting and town's poll. If the party opposite put that into its glossy booklet and told the public just what it proposed to do—to take away, if only a small part, some of the democratic rights of the people—I would have no complaint. If hon. Members opposite put it in their programme and went to the country with that as their policy, the public could decide upon it. It might well be that if the party opposite was elected, it would then be able to carry it through and the whole matter would be cleared up. I would have no complaint. I have no complaint about any Member of the House objecting to one of my Bills. I have no complaint to make about anyone calling a Count against one of my Bills, or against anything I support.
I am unlike the hon. Member for Yardley, who would go to any lengths in spite to kill a Bill which may be a very good one. That is what the hon. Member has told me he intends to do. I am quite unlike that. I accept the democracy that we have and the rules of this House are quite satisfactory to me. All I ask is that when anyone objects to a matter, he should at least be able to put his case.
The argument has been advanced that the poll in these towns' polls is so low that it is negligible in size and should be completely disregarded. I do not take that view and I know that the people who go to the poll certainly do not take it. Here is my point about the modernisation of towns' polls. I think that it

was the town of Farnborough where a decision was in doubt. Farnborough wished to have a decision of the electors on an important issue and it got a 76 per cent. poll on a local matter.
The hon. Member for Yardley should have gone further. He conceded to some extent the points about meetings, but he should have gone further and conceded the point about polls. Farnborough has already shown that it is possible to get a 76 per cent, poll on a purely local matter, because it was put to the people in understandable language why they were voting.
At the moment, the Bills and Clauses are complicated. The hon. Member for Yardley was quite right in saying that people do not know exactly for what purpose they are voting. They do not study the matter to that extent. The hon. Member rightly said that in present circumstances, people cannot do this. Farnborough, however, went to the trouble of simplifying the matter, as could well be done now by the proper legislation, and giving the people a poll which they could thoroughly understand, showing them the importance of it and, what is more, publicising it. These things are not publicised by the city and town councils. They like to keep them dark. The fact that Farnborough produced a 76 per cent. poll shows that it can be done.
We have also been told that the cost is very high. I would say that it is a low cost to preserve the people's rights of free speech and a democratic vote. In any event, in Birmingham it has never reached the cost of ¼d. rate, which is less than it costs to supply the people with subsidised golf, tennis, bowls and things like that. It is not expensive. To put forward the idea of the high cost as a legitimate argument is quite out of proportion to the case which has been put.
I could quote many more instances, but I will not do so. The time has come when we must recognise that this is a matter on which we should remember the words of Abraham Lincoln—

Mr. Howell: Do they have towns' polls in America?

Mr. Gurden: Was it not Abraham Lincoln who spoke about
government of the people, by the people, for the people".


or something like that? What about "government by the people"? Have not the people some right in this matter? If we take away only one small part of the people's rights, it should be a matter for a General Election and not a local election.

1.40 p.m.

Mr. Victor Yates: I had not intended to intervene in this debate, because there are important matters to be discussed afterwards, but I feel it necessary to make some reference to the charge which the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Mr. Gurden) made against all the hon. Members who represent the City of Birmingham and who sit on this side of the House.
In opening his speech the hon. Member made a general reflection upon all those hon. Members. Perhaps the hon. Member would stop having his private meeting with hon. Friends and listen to what we have to say? He spoke for well over an hour, and his speech from the beginning to the end showed that the whole of his opposition to this Motion is based upon a petty personal attitude because somebody tried to block a Bill in which he was interested.

Mr. Gurden: This all started long before that, before I had a Bill in this House. This matter was gone into very thoroughly, and I made the same objections then, at great length.

Mr. Yates: I am saying that today, up to the time he was called to order by Mr. Speaker, the hon. Member was showing very clearly that he had a personal objection to an action of hon. Members in preventing him from getting a Bill through.
During the fourteen years I have been a Member of the House I have always respected and honoured the rights of back benchers. I believe it is right that Fridays should be private Members' time, and for that reason I have never taken part in or subscribed to a count even when I did not agree with the proposal being debated or with the hon. Member speaking at the time of a count. What has taken place today is another example, perhaps a more reprehensible example, of an unfair attitude to the House and its Members.
The hon. Member's speech showed completely muddled thinking from beginning to end.

Mr. Ede: No thinking at all.

Mr. Yates: Yes, a speech of no thinking at all, as my right hon. Friend says. That is probably nearer the truth. The hon. Member made this statement: "Hon. Members opposite do not care about Birmingham."

Mr. Gurden: Hear, hear.

Mr. Yates: The hon. Member admits it. Why? Because hon. Members on this side did not support a Bill in which he was interested. He has made great play with that. Let me remind the hon. Member that the same kind of recommendation came in regard to this Motion from the Birmingham Corporation as came in regard to the Bill in which he was personally interested. If the hon. Member claims that hon. Members on this side ought to respect the views of the corporation upon a matter in which he is interested, we are surely entitled to ask him to respect the views of the corporation on the matter now under consideration.

Mr. Gurden: I was pointing out that Birmingham Corporation was Socialist-controlled and that, although I did not have to, I had, on occasion, gone out of my way to observe what the corporation asked me to do.

Mr. Yates: We are almost threatened that we are to have a circular from the town clerk of Birmingham brought to our notice. I bring to the notice of the House a circular from the town clerk to Birmingham Members upon this matter. Of course, he was writing on the instruction of the City Council. He pointed out that if the result of the poll or the decision of a town's meeting is against the promotion of a Bill or any provision of it the Council must take steps to withdraw the Bill or the provision, as the case may be. He explained that he was asked by the corporation's general purposes committee to inform hon. Members that the council strongly supported the abolition of meetings and polls of local government electors, and he asked us to give consideration to this matter.
The hon. Member for Selly Oak, who has accused us of not respecting the


views of the council, now totally ignores the conclusion, which has been given after most careful consideration, by the council, and which has been recommended. The hon. Member was clearly not speaking in the name of the City of Birmingham.
Although I live in the constituency represented by the hon. Member, I did not know until today that our constituency was represented by such a petty-minded attitude. His argument is that the towns' polls are of use if a Socialist council decides to bring a Bill embodying Socialist proposals. Then it is all right to have a town's poll. He also subscribes to the view that if, when that town poll takes place, only four out of every 100 electors go to the poll that is a reasonable and democratic decision. Frankly, I do not believe that democracy could accept such a thing at all.

Mr. Gurden: What figure does the hon. Member suggest?

Mr. Yates: The hon. Member talked about councillors being returned on a poll of 16 per cent. That is extremely low. If there were a vote of only 16 per cent. in the Selly Oak ward in a municipal election he would think it extremely disappointing.
All of us in the City of Birmingham would think it a disappointing thing if there were not 50 per cent. or 60 per cent. of the electors going to the poll in a municipal election. We in Birmingham consider that 20 per cent. in a poll is an extremely low percentage. The town clerk drew our attention to two cases. One poll cost £5,500 and only 3·8 per cent. of the electorate voted in it. The other cost £6,000 and only 3·2 per cent. of the electorate voted. I would point out to the hon. Member for Selly Oak that on those occasions a Tory Government were in power at Westminster.
The hon. Member is contradicting the views of his hon. and gallant Friend; he Member for Wembley, North (Wing Commander Bullus), who told us that he himself, as a Tory Member of the House, had organised opposition to a Private Bill promoted by a town corporation.
I cannot understand how the hon. Member can suggest that the proposal in this Motion would take away the people's right to decide whether they are for or

against a Measure when he is prepared to leave the decision to four out of every 100 who could go to the poll when that takes place under a Tory Government. That argument is a ridiculous one. As I have pointed out before, one of the greatest examples of municipal Socialism is the Municipal Bank in Birmingham. It is one of the greatest successes we could possibly have. It is ridiculous to suggest that four out of every 100 should decide an issue like that.

Mr. McAdden: I know that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Mr. Yates) has been for many years a valiant fighter for the rights of minorities to express their opinions. But how does he reconcile with his traditional attitude to minorities his present view that 3 per cent. or 4 per cent. is too small a minority to express an opinion? It does not seem to match with his traditional attitude.

Mr. Yates: There are two points on this. There is first the gathering of the electorate to a town's meeting. I do not object to that. I would support having a town's meeting. I do not believe, however, that a meeting even of 1,000 people, held one evening, can achieve a really democratic consideration of a Measure.
For that reason, I think it is quite wrong to take a vote at a meeting. I have been attending party political conferences for years, and I will concede to the hon. Member that what he really means when he talks about free speech in an assembly is a meeting of 1,000 or 1,500 people, but it cannot be done. In this case, the only really democratic process would be to gather 750,000 people together, and, as I have already pointed out, there is not a football ground in Birmingham on which we could put them all together. Indeed, if we put them on all the football grounds in Birmingham, I doubt whether we should get them in.
What I am saying is that where there is a city council of elected representatives, those representatives ought at least to be able, by a majority, which is the constitutional method, to propose a Bill and recommend to Parliament that that Bill should be considered. Parliament itself has a perfect right to reject that Bill, but if Parliament has considered the matter, I think we should be more likely to protect minority rights, through properly constituted Committees, and so on, of


this House, rather than throw the matter open to a poll, in which we get such a low percentage of votes, or even to a town meeting.

Mr. McAdden: I was not trying to trick the hon. Member. I was trying to follow his argument to see how he reconciles his traditional attitude to the rights of minorities with his attitude on this matter. He has been quick enough to see—and I congratulate him upon it—the danger into which he is slipping when he says that the rights of minorities can be overrun on an issue of this kind, because such a minority does not constitute a democratic assembly. If he says that so few people decide things at party conferences, it makes nonsense of the claims of party organisations that they are representative of the democratic will of the people. If decisions taken on these matters are to be left to a comparatively small number of people, what is the point of having party conferences at all?

Mr. Ede: Ask the League of Empire Loyalists.

Mr. Yates: It is, no doubt, extremely difficult to operate, and the mere gathering of heads alone is not sufficient. What I want to try to put to the House and to the hon. Member for Selly Oak is this. I concede the point about meetings, but I am disappointed that he should argue the idea that if we reject the suggestion of a meeting deciding whether a Clause should go in a Bill or not, nevertheless, 100 or even 1,000 people have the right to prevent Parliament, which is the most democratic assembly of all, from considering the matter. [An HON. MEMBER: "No".] Oh, yes, it does, because a town's poll can take away a Clause in a Private Bill, as the town clerk of Birmingham says.

Mr. Gurden: Mr. Gurden rose—

Mr. Yates: No, I do not want to give way. I want to conclude my speech.

Mr. Ede: The hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Mr. Gurden) is trying to spin this out.

Mr. Yates: I conclude by saying that the hon. Member for Selly Oak was inconsistent. He said, first, that he had no complaints, whereas he really has a personal complaint all the way through, and would not have made so many refer-

ences to my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, All Saints (Mr. D. Howell) if he had not had some personal feeling in the matter. I think it is unfortunate, because he is chasing something which is not the principle with which we are now involved. It does not matter whether we have a Socialist Government or a Tory Government, I should still argue, as I have done on other occasions, what is the right principle.
The hon. Gentleman said that he does not want to take away the right of the people to decide, when, in fact, he is taking away that right. Although it may be unfortunate for us that there are local authorities with Tory majorities, he may think that it is unfortunate for him to have local authorities with Socialist majorities, but this is all part of our democracy, and we have to reckon with it. If an authority decides to put forward a Bill for consideration, it matters not whether it concerns motor cars, garages, furniture, or whatever it may be. It may be a Tory recommendation of the most reactionary kind, but if a council decides to put it forward a Tory Government might accept it, where a Socialist Government might not, but, at least, they should be entitled to put the matter forward.
I hope that the hon. Member will not press his objection too strongly, but will allow us to take a reasonable attitude towards this matter. I hope that the Government will consider this Motion most carefully.

1.55 p.m.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government (Mr. J. R. Bevins): I hope it will suit the convenience of the House if at this point I make what I promise will be a very brief intervention. I shall attempt to compensate for the marathon of my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Mr. Gurden), by speaking with my usual succinctness. I shall also try to avoid getting myself inveigled into the muddy eddies of Birmingham municipal politics, which sound to me almost as bad, if not actually as bad, as those of Liverpool, of which I have had some experience.
Several hon. Gentlemen on Opposition benches have invited me to give the House a promise on behalf of the Government that the Government might


be prepared to incorporate the principle of this Motion in legislation. I do not think it is any secret that my right hon. Friend is pretty fully occupied with legislation at present, but what happened at Harrow yesterday is rather reassuring, and it may well be that the Government will have perhaps another five or six years for future legislation.
I should like to congratulate the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Mr. Usborne) on his good fortune in the Ballot, and also for the speech which, whatever one's view of the subject may be, was a very interesting and balanced speech, which I very much enjoyed. This question of town meetings and towns' polls, as the House well knows, is liable to affect not only Birmingham, but all borough councils and all urban district councils preparatory to their promoting Parliamentary Bills, and it has been a source of dispute ever since these meetings and polls were first made part of the Private Bill procedure by the Borough Funds Act, 1872.
It was in February, 1957, on the Second Reading of the Bill introduced by my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Wembley, North (Wing Commander Bullus) that the main arguments were deployed, and since then they have been fully developed. There is, on the one hand, the point of view expressed by the right hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede) and his hon. Friends that these town meetings and towns' polls are an anachronism, and the contrary view, which has been expounded at some length by my hon. Friend the Member for Selly Oak, that they constitute a bulwark in defence of minorities.
As a general rule, I do not like sitting on the fence politically, but that must be my position this afternoon. I think the fashionable word is "disengagements". The Government view on this matter is the same as that which I very fully expressed in the debate on 15th February, 1957; that is to say, that a matter which deals with the legislative processes is essentially one for the consideration and for the judgment of the House of Commons. The Government are, therefore, content to accept the view of the House on this Motion, whatever that view may prove to be.

2.0 p.m.

Mr. Glenvil Hall: The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government referred to the fact that it might be possible as a result of the by-election held yesterday at Harrow, East that his Government would have a further period of office. I hope that if that eventuality comes about we shall have legislation from the present Government to abolish town meetings and towns' polls. I read that expectation into what the hon. Gentleman said and understood that the reason why he could not give a firmer answer for this Parliament was that his Minister was fully occupied with the legislation which is at present before the House. If that reading of what the hon. Gentleman said is correct, I am glad to have heard it, as I am sure are many of my hon. and right hon. Friends.
We have had a good deal of tedious repetition from the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Mr. Gurden), and it would be quite improper of me to take up the time of the House for too long to go over the arguments which have been put not only this morning but on previous occasions when this matter has been under review. Incidentally, if I understood the hon. Member for Selly Oak aright, his chief reason for supporting town meetings and towns' polls is that some cities or towns, or even urban districts, might on occasion introduce into Private Bills proposals of a Socialistic kind. He quite forgot that places like Brighton and Southport and other seaside centres have more municipal Socialism than the City of Birmingham, one division of which he represents. Therefore, the fact that a city may not have a Socialist majority on its council is no protection from municipal Socialistic legislation promoted through Private Bills.
The debate, in spite of the long intervention by the hon. Member for Selly Oak, leads us to certain inevitable conclusions based upon the facts as we know them. The first fact is that whilst this procedure might have been adequate a century ago when the Local Government Act, 1858, was placed on the Statute Book, under modern conditions it is now quite impossible to implement. The calling of a town meeting is obligatory upon boroughs, county boroughs and urban


district councils, but it is plain beyond a shadow of doubt—and no argument has been put forward today to show the contrary—that in these days of large electorates it is physically impossible, normally, to hold such meetings in any real sense.
What was feasible when the Borough Funds Act was passed in 1872 is clearly out of the question today when we have electorates as large, for example, as that of Liverpool which numbers over half-a-million. The hon. and gallant Member for Wembley, North (Wing Commander Bullus) cited an instance where Liverpool had to hold a town meeting and only about 20 people turned up—this out of a population of half-a-million. Incidents like that reduce this requirement to an absurdity and make it quite obvious that town meetings are an anachronism.
None of us on this side of the House objects to town meetings and towns' polls as such. In the old days, undoubtedly, there was reason for their institution. if it were possible to hold them, they would perform a useful function even now, but it is crystal clear that it is quite impossible to hold a town meeting these days. Only a small proportion of the electors can attend, even if the meeting is held on some large football ground, and if it were held on a football ground there would be no guarantee that all those present would be electors, and it would be quite impossible for the chairman, whose duty it would be, to explain in detail and in a reasonable way the often complicated provisions of the Private Bill which it was proposed to promote. Nor at the poll, in which only a handful of electors are interested, does the ballot paper help those electors to understand matters better. Whilst it is difficult for a chairman to explain the provisions of a Bill to a large meeting, it is normally impossible for the electorate to know what they are voting about from the resolutions which appear on the ballot paper.
Mr. Dingle, clerk of Manchester Corporation, presented specimens of such a ballot paper to the Joint Committee on Private Bill Procedure which reported in 1955, and one of these ballot papers has been incorporated at page 298 of that Report. When Manchester Corporation promoted the Manchester Corporation

Bill in 1933, fifteen resolutions had to be. put to the electors.
I do not propose to read all of them. but, with permission, I should like to read Resolution 2 to indicate the difficulty which faces the voter when he has to judgment on the provisions of a Private Bill. It reads:
Resolution 2—Acquisition of Lands for Street Improvements and Waterworks.
Clause 5 (a) and (b) (Power to take lands), and Clauses 6 (Acquisition of easements), 7 (Period for compulsory purchase of lands), 8 (Further powers of entry), 9 (Increase of Rent and Mortgage Interest (Restrictions) Acts, not to apply), 10 (Retention and disposal of lands), and 11 (Extension of time for compulsory purchase of lands) in Part II (Lands), and so much of the remaining parts of the Bill as relates to those Clauses.
Unless he knows exactly to what these references relate, and even then only if he has a plan which he can follow, I refy anybody to understand exactly on what he was voting. Clearly it would be quite impossible for an ordinary elector to know what he was voting on with a resolution of that kind. Voting papers of that size and resolutions of that sort are common when Private Bills are promoted and it is clearly impossible for the ordinary elector to pass judgment upon them.
The holding of a referendum of this kind has frequently been a very costly business. It means setting up polling stations: the appointment of officers of various kinds including a presiding officer; the printing and posting of numerous notices, and the printing of thousands of voting papers. The expense may well run into thousands of pounds when a poll is taken in a large city. My hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, North-West (Mr. Janner) pointed out earlier today that when a poll was taken in Leicester on a Private Bill which the Corporation promoted in 1956, only 1·4 per cent. of the electorate voted out of a total of 202,787 and the cost worked out at 10s. a vote. I suggest that in the end nobody was any the wiser as a result of that poll.
It has been asked, and I think that it may be asked again in the debate since the Local Government Act, 1933, is of recent date, and if conditions then were much the same as they are now, why Parliament in its wisdom put these provisions in that Act. The answer is simple.


It is that these provisions were re-enacted from the Borough Funds Act, 1872, as amended by a similar Act of 1903, because at that time the Chelmsford Committee—which drafted the Bill that afterwards became the Act of 1933—felt that although it was in favour of leaving them out, the terms of reference under which it worked would not permit it. Following the Royal Commission of 1925, the Chelmsford Committee was nevertheless of the view that this provision should not be included. So we have today the astonishing fact that from 1925 onwards, every body which has looked at this matter—the Royal Commission, the Chelmsford Committee, and finally the Joint Select Committee which reported in 1955—has recommended that these provisions should be abolished.

Mr. Dudley Williams: I have been looking at the report. I cannot find the precise page, but I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Truro (Mr. G. Wilson) and my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) were not in agreement.

Mr. Glenvil Hall: That is correct. When the Report of the Committee, in draft, was considered by the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) I believe, moved an Amendment to change the wording so that it was not quite so emphatic as it appeared in the Report. The voting on his Amendment was four to eight, so that by a majority of two to one members of the Committee came to the decision that in their view town meetings and towns' polls should be abolished.
I hope the House will agree to the Motion moved so ably by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Mr. Usborne). Everybody who has considered this matter with any degree of common sense must agree that although these powers were useful in their day, they are now obsolescent if not obsolete. Therefore, without taking up any more of the time of the House, I hope that if this Motion is carried to a Division we shall by a majority agree to it.

2.13 p.m.

Mr. Richard Body: Rather on the principle of judging a man by his friends, I have, in the short time I have

been in this House, tended to judge Motions by those who propose and second them and those who support them. It is therefore with some disappointment that I find my criterion mistaken on this occasion because, long before I came to this House, I had a great regard for the views of the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Mr. Usborne) and of my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Wembley, North (Wing Commander Bullus), who was an old friend.
I will try to answer some of the points made by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Colne Valley (Mr. Glenvil Hall) who, as those of us who were on Standing Committee "C" two years ago know, has made a careful study of this subject. As I understand it, the right hon. Gentleman made three points against town meetings and towns' polls. The first was that almost invariably there was a low poll. That is true, although on occasions there has been a poll as high as 46 per cent. that is a dangerous argument. Some of us here have been elected to a trade union office. The hon. Gentleman the Member for Leeds, West (Mr. C. Pannell) is not here now, but he and I have one thing in common, namely, that we have both been elected to a union office affiliated to the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions. I do not know what percentage voted for him but in my case the poll was a little lower than the average.

Mr. Ede: That explains it.

Mr. Body: It may do. It was lower than the average cited by my hon. Friend in the case of towns' polls. Ought these elections to cease because of their low pall? The argument cuts both ways. There were six polls in Birmingham in quick succession, all the Birmingham Corporation's proposals were defeated, and the number of people who voted in favour of them were few. In my submission, if there was any real opinion in Birmingham in favour of what the Birmingham Corporation was proposing to do, the poll would have been much higher and the Corporation would have been successful.
The right hon. Gentleman next considered the question of expense. There is no doubt that the holding of a town's poll is expensive, but would he consider the position of some of the small traders


who wish to oppose, say, the extension of the trading powers of a local corporation? If there is no town's poll or town meeting they must bring their opposition to a Select Committee of this House. This is not a cheap matter. If people work in Birmingham it means that they must stay in London for some time, engage Parliamentary agents and perhaps counsel, and argue the matter. That is something which the small trader cannot well afford.
It is my submission, therefore, that the town meeting and town's poll provide a safeguard for the small man who cannot easily come to this House. All that was considered by the Joint Committee on Private Bill Procedure, and the right hon. Gentleman will remember that in the course of the evidence it was said, "Unless you have some interest, you cannot be heard before the Select Committee". That was agreed. So only an individual with a direct interest in the matter, other than as a ratepayer, can have an audience before the Select Committee to make his opposition.
Then the right hon. Gentleman quoted a long-winded item on a ballot paper. I think he quoted Resolution 2 of the poll on the Manchester Corporation Bill, 1933, which is set out on page 298 of the Report of the Joint Committee on Private Bill Procedure. He was rather selective in his quotation. If he will look at page 299 he will see there a very different kind of poll which is eminently easy for the most simple-minded person to understand. It states:
Are you for or against the Resolution in favour of the promotion of The Manchester Corporation Bill, 1938?
What would be more simple than that? Does the right hon. Gentleman suggest that the people of Manchester cannot understand that?

Mr. Glenvil Hall: If the Resolution quoted by the hon. Gentleman had been a common one, I would have recognised that fact. He must admit that the one I quoted is more symptomatic of the kind of Resolution than the simple one he has given the House.

Mr. Body: I am sure the right hon. Gentleman would not deny that he was careful in selecting one which, on the face of it, was difficult to understand, and one which concerned plainly a

minority of people in Manchester, unlike the one I quoted on the opposite page, which is eminently simple and concerns everyone living in Manchester. I promised to be short. On the last occasion I spoke on this subject I had to speak for more than an hour because I was continually interrupted, like my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Mr. Gurden) whose speech was prolonged by interruptions from the other side. I said that I would be short, and I shall be.
I gave a large number of reasons why I supported the principle of town meetings and towns' polls on the last occasion. I do not wish to go over them now. May I. however, make one plea in a very few sentences? The origin of the town meeting is lost in antiquity. It is true that in its present form under the Local Government Act, 1933, it is comparatively new, but the principle of having a town meeting is a most historic constitutional process.
When we considered this last time some of us tried to seek nut the origins of it I do not think that any of us were successful in finding out how far it went back. At all events it goes back many hundreds of years. It has proved in that time to be a most valuable safeguard, and therefore I hope the House will think long earnestly and carefully before it takes the step of bringing to an end such a valuable constitutional process.

2.21 p.m.

Mr. Usborne: I am sure that the House is, and I certainly am, obliged to the hon. Member for Billericay (Mr. Body) for being extremely brief and, I think, not unhelpful. There is one point which I should like to make about what he said. Not every Clause in a Private Bill that is put to a town poll is inevitably defeated. In the 1954 Birmingham Corporation Bill, one of the Clauses asking for powers to restrict the use of loudspeakers in the streets, which was defeated at the town meeting, was then put to the town's poll and sustained at that. I admit that the voting was comparatively close. It was only 1,391 votes that won it, but, even so, less than 5 per cent, of the electorate bothered to take any part in it at all. It is not, therefore, true to say that invariably they get defeated.

Mr. Body: I was referring to those polls where municipal trading was involved. I entirely agree with what the hon. Gentleman has said.

Mr. Usborne: The other point is this. The hon. Member tried to compare getting people to take part in a poll of this kind with the number of voters who take part in electing individuals, either for a council or, in his case, as a Member of Parliament. He tried to argue throughout that these two cases are entirely different. It is perfectly true that the electorate is capable in the mass of choosing people and judging whether they want one or other of a number of people to represent them in the House of Commons. The town's poll is different in the sense that it is putting to the local electors the question whether their council, whom they have already elected, should ask this assembly for certain powers to be delegated to them which they may or may not use. In this sense, it is entirely different.
I understand that one of my hon. Friends is reminding me that I am speaking twice on a substantive Motion.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: The hon. Member has the right of reply and can speak as long as he likes a second time.

Mr. Ede: Surely, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, not beyond four o'clock.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: That is a limit for which I am grateful.

Mr. Usborne: I have had to put up this morning with a good deal of filibustering, but I did not expect it from my closest friends.
I should like to make one or two points about the speech—I call it a speech—of the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Mr. Gurden). He gave the impression, very deliberately clearly, that the town clerk of Birmingham was not known to support my Motion. Indeed, by implication, he tried to give the impression that the town clerk was probably against it. I must ask him categorically to withdraw that, because he knows that it is not true.

Mr. Gurden: I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving me this opportunity to reply. I said quite distinctly that the town clerk's views were not known to me, but he had sent a letter to me, as

the town clerk of Birmingham, in his official capacity, supporting this Motion. I made that quite clear. I said that, obviously, it was under the instruction of the aldermen and councillors of the City of Birmingham Corporation.

Mr. Usborne: I am glad that I gave the hon. Member this opportunity, because I do not think that that is the impression that would be gathered by everyone who listened to him. I think, nevertheless, that it has to be taken to be the truth.
I am in some difficulty. I am desperately anxious that the Motion shall be fully discussed and, in fact, passed in this House. It seems, however, clear to me, in view of the extremely long dissertation we have had from the hon. Member for Selly Oak, that one or two hon. Members do not intend to let it go to the vote. I do not believe that there are in the House at the moment 100 Members who are prepared to support me if I were to move the Closure. It is perfectly clear to me that there are one or two hon. Members opposite—I know that there is one and I suspect that there are two—who intend to filibuster so that this Motion is not put to the vote. So deep is their concern for Parliamentary democracy that they are making a mockery of the Motion. If that is so, there is little that I can do.
I believe that Parliamentary democracy is a wonderful and superbly delicate instrument, perhaps the most marvellous human mechanism that the wit of man has ever contrived. I think that its brilliance depends on its adaptability and its success upon the skill with which we use it. Its weakness lies in the fact that it is so sensitive that, like Lyttelton's trumpet, blown by a deaf mute, it is absolutely hideous if it is misused. There have been moments in this debate when I think that it has been hideously misused. I am told that if I do not withdraw my Motion it will, for the remainder of the time, be more hideously misused.
My hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, North (Mr. Willey) has an important Motion which I know he wants to be discussed and I think that he ought to be allowed to explain it. The alternative is that the House would debase itself by having to put up with a filibuster. I know that one or two of my hon. Friends


would have liked to speak on my Motion and might yet speak. I know, too, that by the rules of order I cannot withdraw this Motion unless they permit me to do it. Any one hon. Member can object to the withdrawal of the Motion.
I should like, in conclusion, to say that I am very sincere about this. I care a great deal about the way in which Parliamentary democracy is used in practice. It is extremely important. Parliamentary democracy is, in fact, on trial the world over. Many people observe the way in which we behave and some of us are slightly ashamed sometimes.
I believe that nine-tenths of the Members of the House would, if able to do so, support me if the Motion were put to the vote and that only a very small minority, for absurd reasons, are determined to obstruct it. But because I have no power to do anything about it, this being a Friday, I think that the decent thing for me to do, on behalf of the system that I am so proud to take part in, is to ask leave to withdraw the Motion, rather than have the rest of the time mutilated by two hon. Members opposite. I therefore beg to ask leave to withdraw the Motion.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

CONSUMERS (PROTECTION)

2.30 p.m.

Mr. Frederick Willey: I beg to move,
That this House urges Her Majesty's Government to review the present safeguards to protect the consumer and to ensure that they are effective; to encourage organisations seeking to assist the consumer and improve standards and to provide, where necessary, further safeguards.
First, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Mr. Usborne) for the step that he has taken. though I do not know whether I am more obliged to him or to hon. Members opposite who had intended to appose the Motion. However, I think that the step which has been taken is one which meets the convenience of the House.
I turn now to the important subject raised in my Motion. I would apologise in anticipation by saying that I do not intend to make an amusing speech. It has become conventional to make an amusing speech on this subject. It is in

fact rather a prosaic subject. I am precluded from taking such a course, because, as I have previously confessed, I enjoy flamboyant advertising and do not object to my children getting plastic space ships with breakfast cereals provided that there is no risk of their consuming the space ships with the cereals. [An HON. MEMBER: "What about the additional expense?"] The expense is a matter that we can consider for ourselves, but if it makes the breakfast more enjoyable it is something for which we can pay if we want to.
If consumer protection is to be effective, I believe that it must depend upon the good will of manufacturers, distributors and retailers. I do not want unduly to upset anyone; I want the utmost cooperation. We are discussing something which is becoming of increasing importance and is much mare widely recognised than even a few years ago. I do not want to be very controversial. I hope to elicit a reasonably constructive reply from the Minister. Before I approach the main suggestion that I want to make. I must say that I recognise the Minister's difficulties in that the Conservative Party is rather doctrinaire about these matters and we have to recognise that we are dealing here with many powerful vested interests. In spite of that non-controversial, factual comment, I recognise that everyone today is realising more and more that we are entitled to intervene and redress the balance against the consumer when that is necessary.
We have already got a good deal of State intervention in respect of consumer protection. At the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food we have the Food Standards Committee. We also have the Council of Industrial Design. Both bodies, which are State-supported, are doing very effective work. I do not think that even hon. Gentlemen opposite would now say that this is interference in commerce from Whitehall. The work of these bodies is very much appreciated and recognised by consumers. Every month I look forward to receiving from the Council of Industrial Design. my copy of Design, which is a first-class publication.
I would also mention the British Standards Institution, which receives a considerable grant. £160,000 per annum. We all recognise the work that it is doing.


We also recognise that the Government have set a precedent—I hope that it will be a precedent—by providing £10,000 specifically allocated to the protection of the domestic consumer. So this is no longer a partisan issue which need divide the House.
Having got so far, I wish to make a proposal to the Minister. In this matter I think we should look to the very successful precedent of the Arts Council and establish, for the purposes of consumer protection, a Consumers' Council to encourage, promote and guide consumer advice, consumer protection and the provision of further consumer safeguards. I consider that the membership of such a council should correspond with that of the Arts Council. I do not mean that we should have artists intervening in these matters, but we should have people who are distinguished and recognised among manufacturers, users and distributors, experienced people in whom we can place confidence. The Government should make a grant in aid to the council, as in the case of the Arts Council. The council would consider the best use which could be made of the money made available by the Government. It would have panels, just as the Arts Council has panels, dealing with the different aspects of consumer protection.
I feel that this would probably be the most effective machinery for dealing with what is recognised as a difficult problem. I will give a few illustrations of the work that such a Consumers' Council would do. Each year it would provide an annual report. This would be a valuable review of the work being done year by year. It would also affect public opinion. I hope that it would be as attractively produced as the recent annual report of the Arts Council.
The Council, grant-aided by the Government, would probably have under its umbrella the Council of Industrial Design and the British Standards Institution, not to do the work they are now doing but merely to allocate the money to them and keep their work under review. It would probably in the same way keep under review the work of the Food Standards Committee. I do not expect the Parliamentary Secretary to be able to give me a reply about soft drinks. All we can do is to recognise that here

is a Committee doing very valuable work. and we can recognise that by the way in which its report on soft drinks has been received. The Council would also keep under review the Food Hygiene Advisory Council. If they thought it right and proper, these bodies would, in return, refer matters back to the Consumers' Council as being matters outside their sphere but matters which they felt should be dealt with. The work which is at present being done would not be materially altered by this proposal, but the scope of the work being done by these different bodies would be brought under a common review.
I turn now to some of the other work more directly affecting the consumer. I have mentioned the British Standards Institution. We have the new and very welcome development of the British Standards Institution providing, through the Consumer Advisory Council, directly for the domestic consumer assistance and guidance in consumer protection, should regard that work as coming more appropriately under a Consumers' Council. My view on this is confirmed by the fact that the B.S.I. Consumer Advisory Council, apparently in the light of even its short experience, is driven to a similar conclusion. It is proposing that the work of the Consumer Advisory Council should be separate from the work of the British Standards Institution and that a separate entity should be set up to deal with it.
I am suggesting something much wider, but the proposal of the Consumer Advisory Council supports the proposal that I am now making. Whether, in regard to such a broad council as I am proposing, it would be necessary to extend the work of the B.S.I. Consumer Advisory Council is another matter, but it is the sort of matter which would be considered by such a council. I hope that in any case the Parliamentary Secretary will assure the House that the grant is being continued, if not extended, because I think we all recognise that within a very short time the Consumer Advisory Council has already done excellent work.
If we were considering that work, such a body as I have described would be in a far better position to consider both the amount of the grant which should be made to the B.S.I. Consumer Advisory Council and whether grants should be


made for a particular work which was being carried out. It might find it desirable to give a specific grant to support the publication of the Shoppers' Guide, for instance. On application from the Advisory Council, it might similarly consider specific work, such as the provision of better standards for electrical appliances. Such a body would help to promote such campaigns as "Guard That Fire", matters which do not ordinarily come within single Departmental responsibility.
Equally important, such a council could more easily assist voluntary bodies. As the House knows, I have always taken the view that where there is scope for voluntary activity it is better to leave that activity to the voluntary organisations and far better for the Government to give those organisations assistance.
This is a matter in which, apart from the bodies I have mentioned and which ire officially supported, much excellent work is done by voluntary bodies. We have the Consumers' Association, which delights in its independence and which was fortunate enough to receive 6,000 dollars from the Consumers' Union of America. It would, I believe, be equally delighted to receive aid from the State if we could provide a formula which would not affect its independent status.
What I am trying to provide against is the difficulty which such an association feels. No one would say that through the aid of the Arts Council, the independence of artistic endeavours is affected by State intervention. Direct Departmental aid is another matter. Such a body would be able to be assisted without feeling that its independence was in any way affected.
There is another illustration more directly concerning the Parliamentary Secretary. The Retail Trading Standards Association does excellent work, including the prosecutions which it conducts and which it is really conducting for and on behalf of the Board of Trade. Why should there not be aid given to the R.T S.A. specifically for such work? It could show that it had already carried out during recent years 36 prosecutions of which 35 had been successful, and it would be right and proper for the council I am suggesting to allow specific aid for such a body.
I will give another example, a matter which has been discussed in the House before. Over recent years, there has been considerable development of quality marks and branded names. This has been desirable and undesirable. It has been desirable because it has established standards, and undesirable because in some cases it has provided false standards.
One of the difficulties in this case is to provide for independent testing. No reputable manufacturer would oppose such testing. Indeed, he would welcome it. But it would be difficult for the Government to provide such testing facilities directly—and if he likes, the Parliamentary Secretary can contradict me, but if he does, I will ask him to undertake the work—but in the form I am suggesting such a Council could do this sort of work. Such a Council might well cooperate with trade associations to provide some of the money and to see that the rest of the money was provided by the trade associations themselves, to provide for independent testing and for certifying bodies and similar organisations.
I call attention to another illustration. In Holland, there has been the successful development of what are called arbitration panels to deal with laundry and dry-cleaning. With disputes affecting laundry and dry-cleaning, matters are always difficult, because the different parties evade responsibility—there is the retailer, the manufacturer, the laundry, and what the consumer may have done to the material concerned.
It would be extraordinarily difficult rot the Government to conduct negotiations with the industries affected in order to establish arbitration panels, but it would be easy for the sort of body I have in mind, divorced from the Government but dependent upon Government aid, to see such arbitration panels established. Such a council would be far more effective in getting greater co-operation from the people concerned.
In this catalogue, I should not omit the work of local authorities. I have always felt that the town hall is a propel centre for consumer advice. Excellent work has been done, in Bradford, for instance, but, just as the Arts Council has encouraged many local authorities to take a greater interest in the arts than would otherwise have been the case, so


I should like my suggested council to be able to encourage and promote this type of work.
Frankly, I should like such a body to be in touch with the nationalised industries. I doubt whether the consultative machinery for the consumers of the products of nationalised industries has been altogether effective, but there is no reason why such a body should not bring the nationalised industries within its umbrella.
When we last debated this subject, I mentioned the possible use of the B.B.C. for spreading information about consumer protection. This is vitally important. We now have the two publications which I have mentioned, Shoppers' Guide and Which?, whose total circulation is about 150,000 to 175,000. That is only a tiny fragment of the consuming public. Those publications do tremendous good, but if their work were available to a wider audience, it would be more effective. When I have followed the guidance of one of those publications, even in big London stores, I have not always been able to obtain the best buy. If far greater publicity were given to that work, the effect on standards in the shops would be far greater.
When I first made it, I thought my proposal was original, but I subsequently learned that the practice has been followed in Austria where there is a weekly shopping guide on the radio. I know the difficulties and I know that such a procedure would be ineffective unless we could use branded names, but if such a problem were put before the sort of body I have in mind, the response would be more speedy than that which we would have from the Government.
I do not want at length to refer to advertising and I appreciate the difficulty of the Government in taking direct action about advertising. At present, we have five committees enforcing—if that is the right word—different standards. In some cases they are quite ineffective, and almost farcical, but in other cases they have some effect.
I should have thought that a council such as that which I have proposed could make a much more effective impact in providing safeguards in advertising than the Government could hope to do directly. I notice that my hon. Friend the Member

for Swindon (Mr. F. Noel-Baker) is promoting an Advertising Inquiry Committee. Although this is entirely nonpolitical, the Government would not dare to support such an activity, but a Consumers' Council might find it desirable to do so, if it were undertaking a specific and useful inquiry. These are illustrations of the practical way in which such a council could forward this work more effectively than the Government, and provide for assistance on a much broader scale than the Government are at present doing.
Although it might not be so attractive to the Parliamentary Secretary, one of the attractions of such a proposal is that it could also affect the Government. It could make it more difficult for the Government to procrastinate, just as the Arts Council can create a climate in which we are more willing to give aid to the arts. This is not necessarily undesirable. I do not think that the hon. Gentleman would be sitting there, complacent and unashamed at not having implemented the Report of the Hodgson Committee, if we had had such a Consumers' Council.
In spite of recent legislation many things still require to be done, even in respect of food and drugs. There are also the questions of hire purchase and false descriptions. These matters could be dealt with if we had an impartial body which was able to call the attention of the Government and the public to what ought to be done. I doubt whether the Egg Marketing Board would have been allowed to avoid the date-stamping of eggs with the ease with which it did if we had had such a body to express its opinion about the matter.
I do not want to traverse matters raised in earlier debates, but there are also the questions of switch sales, and the sale of habit-forming drugs. We do not expect any action from the Government; in fact, it is difficult for the Government to take action in some of these matters. But if we had a body such as I suggest, able to make recommendations to the Government, we might get some effective action either from the trade organisations or, if necessary, in the form of legislation. In previous debates some wide points have been raised, dealing with the question of distribution costs and methods. The Parliamentary Secretary


need not look so concerned now. A body of the type I suggest would not be able to carry out these investigations without Government approval, but it could provide the necessary machinery for that sort of work.
I now want to return more specifically to the terms of the Motion. I have canvassed this idea this afternoon because I believe that it is a new and possibly effective way of meeting a real need. I realise that it was for this reason that some of my colleagues in the Cooperative Party suggested a Ministry of Consumer Welfare. I can see difficulties in hiving off from the many Departments certain of their responsibilities. I appreciate that some of those responsibilities are associated with other responsibilities which would have to remain with those Departments, and that it would not be an easy administrative operation to bring together these various functions within one Department, however desirable it might be. The other and more important difficulty is that many of the matters which I have mentioned could not easily be made matters of direct Departmental responsibility.
I do not expect a Government reply, at short notice, with regard to the proposals that I have made. What I ask them to do, however, is to recognise that whether or not they take this step they have to answer for the various matters with which I have dealt in passing. If the responsibility remains with the Government, they are bound to take some action. I do not think that there is any need to warn the Parliamentary Secretary, but I warn the Government that this is a matter in which increasing public attention is being shown. The two consumer organisations which I have mentioned are relatively small, but their work has had a real impact upon public opinion.
I recognise that the Conservative Party, in particular, is in real difficulty in standing up to the very powerful vested interests concerned, but we must recognise that the new techniques, organisations and methods of sales promotion put the consumers at a disadvantage. We are in a dilemma. Although much enlightened work is being done to help the consumer, organisations which are becoming increasingly powerful are conditioning him. The hon. Member

has had a good deal of experience in these matters, and I ask him to come in as an honest broker and see that the consumer has the widest range of choice, with the greatest range of competition at the point of retail sale; that the buyer knows what he is buying, and that those dangers which can be avoided are avoided.

2.56 p.m.

Mr. George Darling: I beg to second my hon. Friend's Motion.
I, too, would like to thank hon. Members who were interested in the previous discussion for giving us the opportunity of taking part even in this short debate. Of the three Motions on the Order Paper today, the most important is the last. We are taking them the wrong way round. However, we must accept that situation; it was the luck of the draw.
I want to make three points in regard to this subject. First, I entirely agree with my hon. Friend that it would be desirable—in fact, I think it is necessary at this stage in the development of the manufacture, merchanting and selling of consumer goods—to have the kind of council that he has suggested. I want to give a few examples of the way in which I think such a Council should work. At the moment, we have almost covered the field of consumer protection with legislation. Apart from the new weights and measures legislation, which I shall come to shortly, and which is urgently necessary, not a great deal of new legislation is required.
Most of the legislation we have is carried out by means of regulations. Because the manufacture of consumer goods and the methods of selling them are constantly changing and being improved, these regulations have constantly to be brought up to date. They have to move with the changing circumstances. The way in which legislation is now administered by Government Departments does not provide enough flexibility for the regulations to be examined and altered as they should be in order to meet changing circumstances. Therefore, a Council such as my hon. Friend has proposed would be very valuable here in suggesting how the regulations might be altered from time to time. It might also suggest any changes in legislation that may be needed.
I should like to give one example—I had intended to give quite a number, but in view of the time I will content myself with giving only one—of the kind of alteration that may be needed in legislation. We have at the moment covered the question of false labelling and false advertising pretty thoroughly in the Merchandise Marks Acts except for one case which has been brought to my notice. It is possible to get a misleading or false description of an article given verbally by a retailer.
The case I have in mind concerns a person who bought piece goods to be made into chair covers and wanted the piece goods to be washable—in other words, to have been shrunk before they were bought. He was given categorical assurances by the retailer that the material would not shrink when washed. The material did shrink. It shrank so much that it became useless. When investigation was made it was discovered that the manufacturer had indicated to the retailer in some way that the material should be dry-cleaned and should not be washed.
That information should have been passed on to the consumer. That was not done; the retailer gave a completely false description of the article and involved the customer in an expensive loss. As things are, there is no redress, as I understand it. As the Parliamentary Secretary knows, I raised the matter with him and he assured me that verbal false statements, as distinct from false labelling, cannot be brought to book under the Merchandise Marks Acts. An amendment is needed—a small amendment, perhaps—in order not only that the customer should not be misled but the manufacturer's goodwill and reputation should not be impaired by false statements made by retailers. I could give other examples, but the point I want to make is that these things occur and a Council such as my hon. Friend has suggested would help the Government and the trade to keep up to date with modern practices and ideas.
My second point concerns a piece of legislation that is greatly needed—a new Weights and Measures Act. Here I must call attention to the incredible record of the Government in this matter. The Hodgson Committee that reported in 1951

made it perfectly clear that this new legislation, the content of which was proposed in its Report, should have been brought into effect immediately and that the regulations which had to be made under the legislation should be altered from time to time. The Committee suggested reasons why this should be done and the manner in which it should be done.
I want to quote the Hodgson Committee Report because I am sure the Parliamentary Secretary will tell us again that this Report is now to be thrown overboard while a now consumer survey is undertaken. In other words, the Government are going back to the beginning and are not taking any notice of the proposals made in this Report.
The Hodgson Committee said:
Weights and Measures law is concerned in the main with the affairs of trade; and, as new trading practices, new manufacturing techniques and fresh public needs develop over the years, it must take account of such developments if it is to fulfil its primary purpose. This can, of course, be done by passing an amending Act whenever the situation requires; but this merely results, after an interval, in the growth of a lengthy and cumbersome body of law with the defects …
which are outlined in the Report.
The Report then goes on to say:
In a number of cases it would naturally not be possible for these changes to be brought into operation"—
those are changes in regulations and so on—
immediately, owing to the need for new equipment to be made available, for current difficulties in the supply of certain materials to be overcome, and so on. Where we feel that our possession of the facts enables us to do so, we suggest what period of time should be allowed before the particular requirements are fully introduced; and for this purpose we have assumed that, if any new legislation were contemplated on the basis of our recommendations, it would become law within about one year from the submission of our Report.
In other words, the main body of legislation required here to bring our Weights and Measures Acts up to date should have been passed by 1953 at the latest, and we would have had time from then onwards to carry out the new regulations to meet the new conditions and so on which the Hodgson Committee suggested so fully in its Report.
We have been told from time to time that the Government are proposing to introduce a number of new regulations


in order to bring the weights and measures legislation up to date to meet the new trading practices which have developed—prepacked foodstuffs for supermarkets, self-service stores, and so on. In fact, the Parliamentary Secretary's predecessor, on 9th July last year, said:
We hope to bring the Regulations in as soon as possible, in all probability early next session …".—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 9th July, 1958; Vol. 591, c. 463.]
The Session began last October and we are now in March, and all we know is that this information is to be thrown away while the Ministry engages in a new social survey to find out what the customers want and what arrangements can be made to accord with the changes which have taken place since 1951 and to bring our weights and measures legislation up to date. We could go on in this way for years, doing nothing. As soon as the Report became out of date, because nothing has been done, the Government could announce that it was out of date and go back to the beginning and start all over again. That is an easy way of getting nothing done, and that is what the Government are doing. I was surprised when, on 19th February, in a Written Reply, the Parliamentary Secretary said:
In the light of the Survey, it may prove that it the best course is to proceed direct to a Bill which can cover the whole field …".— OFFIC1AL REPORT, 19th February, 1959; Vol. 600, c. 80.]
That is precisely what the Hodgson Committee reported in 1951. Why is it necessary to have another survey to find out whether the Hodgson Committee was correct in 1951? For the life of me I cannot see why the Government should adopt this dilatory, time-wasting line, because these matters are very important. We must bring our completely out-of-date weights and measures legislation up to date, and I regret that the Government are to have this survey instead of carrying out the main recommendations of the Hodgson Committee. I desired to make those two points, and I hope, particularly regarding the second point, that the Parliamentary Secretary can give us a pretty convincing reply.

3.8 p.m.

Mr. Philip Goodhart: I agree with the hon. Member for Sunderland, North (Mr. Willey) and with the

hon. Member for Sheffield, Hillsborough (Mr. Darling) that during the last year or two there has been a tremendous increase in the public interest in this matter. One of the symptoms of this increased interest has been the phenomenal success of the magazine Which?, published by the Consumers' Association. Before I advertise this magazine any further I had better say that I am a member of the Council of the Consumers' Association, although I certainly do not claim to speak for it in any way this afternoon.
During the past eighteen months the Consumers' Association has built up a membership of over 120,000 and has had a renewal rate of subscription of, I think, more than 90 per cent. At the moment it is a flourishing concern which is independent of retailers, wholesalers, manufacturers, advertising agents and the Government. To my mind, the best protection that the customer can have is competition.
About four years ago, in company with other hon. Members of the House, including the hon. Lady the Member for Coventry, South (Miss Burton), I visited the Soviet Union. I remember going into a tailor's shop in Moscow. One of the members of the party asked our guide and interpreter what form of consumer protection there was if anybody had a complaint. The guide answered at very great length, describing the various consumers' councils which would go into any complaints which were made. One of the hon. Members in the party kept on saying, "Jolly good", as all this was described. No doubt it did look fine on paper, but the fact of the matter was that all the goods produced came from a State monopoly, and anyone who has seen any Russian products at all during the last few years will know that they are shoddy, expensive and exceedingly badly designed.
There is an important rôle that the Government can play in consumer protection. I go a long way in support of the case for a Consumers' Council, which has been made so ably this afternoon. I do not think that the Government can hope to hive off on such a Council the responsibility they have for protecting customers from fraud and for looking after the safety aspect of various products, but there is still very great scope for such a Council to do useful work,


in consumer education, a complaint service, advice to manufacturers, and even the establishment of standards.
As I am sure that all hon. Members present know, a considerable debate is in progress now about the attitude which the British Standards Institution should adopt and whether it should go on just issuing one particular mark which goes on to various goods which appear to pass a certain specific standard in certain specified respects. It is argued, with great justification, I think, that too often this mark has become a sort of lowest common denominator. I think that there is much to be said for having kite marks of a different type to represent different standard of quality.
Believing as I do in competition, I hope that my hon. Friend, if he says something about setting up such a Council, will ensure that there are safeguards against turning it into a consumer monopoly. The establishment of a consumer monopoly of that kind would be a disastrously retrograde step. I believe, also, that the Government should be extremely careful of embarking upon comparisons of quality and using public money to subsidise organisations which test the goods produced and then say, for instance, that the Elizabeth Arden anti-sunburn spray is substantially better value than a similar article produced by Helena Rubenstein. This is not the Government's job, particularly when there is a flourishing independent organisation which can do that work well.
I hope that I shall not be thought impertinent if I congratulate the hon. Member for Sunderland, North and the hon. Member for Hillsborough, on the way in which they introduced and supported the Motion. Today, when consumption in this country is at an all-time record, thanks to the wise policy of Her Majesty's Government, it is wise to devote more attention to this matter in the House.

3.15 p.m.

Mr. Anthony Greenwood: By raising this matter this afternoon my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, North (Mr. Willey) has once again placed us in his debt. If I do not discuss in detail the interesting and constructive suggestion which he made

for a Consumers' Council, and which the hon. Member for Beckenham (Mr. Good-hart) endorsed, it is purely because I want to raise very briefly a number of specific points to which I hope that the Parliamentary Secretary will reply.
First, I want to ask certain questions about the Restrictive Trade Practices Act, 1956. The House will remember that, under the procedure created by that Act, restrictive practices have to be registered, and all restrictive practices have then to be considered by the Restrictive Practices Court. It is for the court to decide whether a restrictive practice should continue.
When that Act was going through the House we argued from these benches that its weakness was that it transferred responsibility for monopoly policy from Parliament to the courts. We took the view that the decision should be a political decision, taken by a Minister after full and proper inquiry had taken place.
We believe that our attitude at that time has been justified, particularly by the recent decision of the Restrictive Practices Court that the Cotton Yarn Spinners' Association's minimum prices agreement should be ended. I never liked that agreement. There obviously is a very strong case for saying that it should be ended. What we criticise is that a decision to end it should have been taken at a time when the textile industry is going through extremely difficult times. To decide to introduce another disturbing factor when 400 textile mills have already closed seems to us to be the kind of decision which ought to be taken by a Minister and not by a court of law.
In the view of the Labour Party, if the Restrictive Trade Practices Act is to continue ways must be found of accelerating its workings and of ensuring that decisions by the Restrictive Practices Court take full account of wider economic circumstances. If that cannot be done under the existing Act, new legislation will have to be introduced.
Before I leave that point, I should be grateful if the Parliamentary Secretary will tell us whether the Government are satisfied with the speed at which the procedure is working and with the general effect of the procedure up to date.
I want also to ask certain questions about the Food and Drugs Act, 1955.


Under that Act the Minister can make orders fixing standards of quality for specific foodstuffs So far, Orders have been made, to my knowledge, affecting butter, ice cream, meat paste and fish paste. I should be grateful if the Parliamentary Secretary will tell us how many foodstuffs have so far been covered by Orders of that kind.
When that Act was going through, we on these benches criticised the fact that the Bill, as it was then, omitted certain provisions which had been in the Bill when it was originally drafted by the Labour Government. They were the provisions which called for the registration of catering establishments.
We believe that the registration of catering establishments is of the utmost importance. I often feel that as a people we do not complain nearly enough.
A cup that bears a lipstick's traces
has no romantic or any other kind of appeal to me. Yet how often one finds one in public places of refreshment. I wish that when people were given cracked cups in restaurants and cafés, they would drop them on the floor. I hate to find dirty forks, smeared knives and grubby tablecloths and yet all too frequently one finds them in restaurants and cafés.
I would like to share the confidence of my hon. Friend the Member for Hillsborough (Mr. Darling), in the way that the public react to matters of this kind. I wish I thought that the public were as indignant as many of us, but if there is no public clamour for these things it may be necessary for Parliament to extend the provisions of the Food and Drugs Act.
I remind the House that in its policy statement, "Plan for Progress", the Labour Party spoke of the need for the registration of all catering establishments and said:
This provision will have to be reintroduced if there is to be effective public enforcement of minimum standards of hygiene.
I want to turn next to the Hodgson Report, which was discussed in some detail by my hon. Friend the Member for Hillsborough. I therefore will not deal with it at length. The present situation shows how right were the Opposition to force a Division on 9th July last year because we regarded the reply to a debate on this subject, which was made

by the hon. Gentleman who is now Economic Secretary to the Treasury, as wholly unsatisfactory. My hon. Friend has quoted one extract from the hon. Gentleman's speech on that occasion and I should like to read another. He said:
I actually announced last November that we would be making Regulations under the Sale of Food (Weights and Measures) Act, 1956, and Food and Drugs Act, 1955, to effect quite a number of improvements in the law relating to the retail sale of food, based on certain of the recommendations of the Hodgson Committee.
I was asked to say when. The problems are quite involved. We put out our proposals to about 80 different organisations affected and asked for observations by 31st March. Many meetings are being held with the organisations on points of difficulty, serious points, not obstructionist. Our original proposals may be modified in certain cases as a result.
The hon. Gentleman went on to wring our withers about the difficulties the Board of Trade was encountering. He asked us to put a brave face on the fact that it
may be impracticable to mark soda water syphons …
but he encouraged us by saying that the Government expected to
be successful with spirits sold by the glass.
We were led to believe that the position about strawberries was very satisfactory, but that the position about detergents was difficult. The hon. Gentleman used a rather striking phrase concerning the marking of detergents, that it was difficult to know
at what stage to put the chopper down and say, 'No more loss of moisture'."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 9th July, 1958; Vol. 591, c. 463–5.]
Now, having considered all these difficulties for so long, we had the reply of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade on 19th February that the Government are to have a social survey and decide, perhaps, whether to have legislation and not the regulations which we were promised last July.
I ask the hon. Gentleman seriously to tell us to what timetable the Government are working. We cannot go on indefinitely postponing a decision on a matter which is of tremendous importance, not only to housewives all over the country, but to coal merchants, shopkeepers and other people who have a special interest.
I was delighted to see recently that Sir Frank Lee, the permanent head of the


Board of Trade, in the Stamp Memorial Lecture that he gave last year, said:
A new Weights and Measures Bill—there has not been a major overhaul of the legislation since 1878 and the present legislation is seriously out of date—is a rare exotic which appears to flower only once a century.
I hope that the seed which my hon. Friend has sown this afternoon may have the effect of producing one of these exotic blooms that come out of the Board of Trade so very rarely.
I also venture to remind the House that the Labour Party has gone on record as saying that fresh legislation to implement the main recommendations of the Hodgson Committee will be introduced. Unless the hon. Gentleman pulls his socks up and acts very quickly, it will be hon. Members from the Labour Party who will be implementing the Hodgson Report instead of himself.
The last point I want to make deals with hire purchase. We believe that in hire purchase there is still too much deception. We believe that charges are very high in many cases. That does not mean that we are saying that all firms are bad. Certainly, most of them, I think, behave very well indeed. The nationalised industries, too, set an outstandingly good example, but there are far too many firms operating which do not live up to the high standards one expects of finance houses.
Hire purchase is now a growing factor in our national life. It is, therefore, one of our responsibilities to free it from abuse, in so far as it is possible for us to do so. It is for that reason that, to quote again our document. "Plan for Progress," we have said:
A Labour Government will review the Hire Purchase Acts and the financing of hire purchase, and, where necessary, introduce appropriate amending legislation.
We on this side have made our position perfectly clear in all the matters to which I have referred, and I hope, though I hope without a great deal of confidence, that we shall have an equally specific, equally positive statement of policy from the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board pf Trade.

3.26 p.m.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade (Mr. John Rodgers): I think the House is indebted to the hon.

Member for Sunderland, North (Mr. Willey) and to the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hillsborough (Mr. Darling) for the way in which they have proposed the Motion. I acquit them altogether of playing partisan party politics in this, except for an occasional side crack which is legitimate.
There is no question about it that there is increasing public concern about this question of consumer protection. This is very understandable, because the complexity of modern manufacturing processes does make it more and more difficult for the housewife to understand exactly what she is buying. The old tests are not so easy to apply. The old adage caveat emptor is not quite so easy now to uphold wholeheartedly as it was in the past.
Nevertheless, I do not think I could let pass without a slight protest the remark that the Conservative Party is doctrinaire on this subject and that it finds it very difficult to stand up to powerful vested interests. It is not so at all. The Conservative Party has always believed in a free economy. We have said we believe that the housewives and consumers of the country are best served by a competitive private enterprise system. It has, however, always also been part of the Conservative Party's philosophy that it is the duty of the State, if it is necessary, to give protection to the consumer and to the uninformed.
We have got a very honourable record in that. The party opposite has not always been so concerned about the welfare of the consumer as it would have us believe today. Indeed, one of the objections we put forward when that party was indulging in their wholesale programme of nationalisation was the fear that if we created these great State monopolies they would tend to operate to the disadvantage of the consumer—

Mr. Darling: Nonsense.

Mr. Rodgers: —and the elimination of competition. We believe that by and large the free play of competition and freedom of choice is the very best safeguard that the housewife could have, and that it is worth far more than any amount of legislation.
I shall come to that interjection of "Nonsense" by the hon. Member for


Hillsborough. As the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Lewisham, South (Mr. H. Morrison), who played no small part in the nationalisation programme, himself said in a pamphlet in 1957 when he tried to justify nationalisation:
There is manifested a striking lack of sympathy with the consumer. Indeed, the consumer—who is everybody—is too often forgotten".
I share the doubts of the hon. Member for Sunderland. North whether the consumer consultative machinery is not creaking at the joints and is not a very poor protection for the consumers. Therefore, I hope that on reconsideration the hon. Member for Hillsborough will not regard this general attitude as one of nonsense. I do not believe that it really is so.
As I say, the Conservatives have got a good record. The body which has been referred to today, the Consumer Advisory Service, which is attached to the B.S.I., was set up, after all, by a Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer.
In answer to the hon. Member for Sunderland, North, who asked whether the grant will continue, I can only say that, subject to Parliamentary approval, which is of course necessary in this case, it certainly will continue, as far as we are concerned, unless some other organisation should take its place.
I am equally grateful to the hon. Member for Sunderland, North not only for having chosen this subject after being successful in the Ballot, but also for his courtesy in letting me know the main headings which he was to raise in moving this Motion, which did help me a little more than would otherwise have been the case in enlarging on the points of particular importance which he had in mind.
This question of consumer protection is one that is exercising the public mind, and it is one to which we at the Board of Trade have been giving a great deal of thought and attention for a considerable time, particularly since it is my Department which has the general responsibility of looking after the interests of consumers, and of helping, with encouragement, advice and sometimes money, bodies which are themselves promoting the interests of consumers.
I am happy, therefore, right at the beginning of my remarks, and without attempting to reply in detail to all the points that have been raised, to be able to inform the mover and seconder of the Motion and the House that the Government intend to set up a Committee to consider this whole question of consumer protection. I regret that I am not in a position to announce the terms of reference, nor am I in a position to name the chairman or the members who will constitute that Committee, but I shall hope to do so as soon as possible.
I hope that this news will please hon. Members on both sides of the House, and, in particular, the hon. Lady the Member for Coventry, South (Miss Burton), because we do recognise very much her great interest in this matter and the way in which she has so zealously pursued us on this question of consumer protection. For many months now, since I have been at the Board of Trade, we have been well aware of her very keen interest in this, and I hope that she will feel some satisfaction at the announcement which I have been able to make today.

Miss Elaine Burton: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that I am very disappointed in not being able to take part in the debate, but that, after battling for six years. I am glad to hear that that small gesture has been made by the Board of Trade?

Mr. Rodgers: There is nothing like success, as I am sure the hon. Lady feels, and she is certainly entitled to some credit, but I assure the House that this decision would have been taken whether this debate had taken place or not. It has been in our minds for a long time, though these matters are not swiftly decided, as those who have been in office will recognise.
If there are points which have been raised in the debate to which I do not reply—and quite frankly, I have not got the exact statistics for which I was asked on some of them—I will look into them when I read HANSARD and see whether there is any way in which I can supply the information in reply to specific questions.
On the question of the Hodgson Committee, I think that unwittingly the hon. Member for Hillsborough was a little


unfair. The Hodgson Committee reported in 1951, and it should be borne in mind that at the time that it collected its evidence there was very stringent rationing. Conditions changed very materially in the supply of goods almost immediately after the publication of the Report. This is one of the factors which must be borne in mind. Secondly, it was incumbent upon the Board of Trade, and I am sure that hon. Gentlemen opposite will recognise that it would have been incumbent upon them had they been in office, that the proposals of the Committee should be submitted to eighty or so bodies for their comments, criticisms and views on the practical difficulties which might be encountered in trying to enforce some of the recommendations which are to be found in the Hodgson Committee's Report.
It may surprise hon. Members opposite to hear this, but I assure them that even to this day, after all this time, I am still in negotiation with certain bodies on certain recommendations arising from the Hodgson Committee's Report. It is not a simple matter. The Hodgson Committee had no machinery at its disposal to measure exactly what the consumer wanted. It was able to take advice only from various representative bodies. I know from experience, as one who has worked for a long time in market research, that it is impossible for a representative body, however well-meaning, to understand exactly what the mass of consumers want in a particular regard.
In view of this fact, and in the changed circumstances, I make no apology for saying that the Board of Trade has undertaken a social survey, a piece of market research, to find out what would be of real help to the consumer. The investigation will be much wider than that of the Hodgson Committee, so that we can proceed not to introduce piecemeal regulations here and there but a weights and measures Bill such as that to which the hon. Member for Rossendale (Mr. Anthony Greenwood) has referred.
I believe that there is need for a new weights and measures Act. There is no difference between us on either side of the House on that subject. I believe that my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade has gone on record

that to his mind the first priority among Board of Trade Bills should be a weights and measures Bill which would be more far-reaching and would give more protection to the consumer than would be afforded by piecemeal regulations and which would be more far-reaching. But as we all know, there is a queue and a timetable for legislation, and in this case it would have to be a very lengthy and detailed Measure.
I hope that I am being honest and am giving a satisfactory answer to the hon. Member for Rossendale in putting all our cards on the table on this subject. We hope that the survey when completed will be of great help. We can then proceed to framing a Bill which, if we are returned at the next election, as I hope we shall, would be introduced. If some other misfortune should happen to the country, the hon. Member for Rossendale says that he would introduce a Measure shortly.

Mr. Greenwood: "We", not "I".

Mr. Darling: How long will the survey take?

Mr. Rodgers: I am not sure at present. This is a pilot survey to make sure that the questions are the right ones to elicit the answers to these problems. Until that is completed we shall not know when the proper survey will be completed, but I hope that it will be before the end of this year.

Mr. Willey: For some years we have been in the position of being told that there will be legislation next Session. Is there any change in this position, or are we to be continually promised that it will be in the next Session?

Mr. Rodgers: There is a change in that the election draws nearer and there will be a new timetable after it.
The hon. Member for Rossendale referred to certain Socialist publications. I notice that in "The Future Labour Offers You" it is stated that
Labour will … insist that reasonable standards are laid down for a wide range of goods, and that goods are properly labelled. The housewife will then be able to see at once by the label whether the goods on the counter are up to the quality laid down by the British Standards Institution.
Does the party opposite know what will happen if manufacturers prefer not to


use a British Standard whether or not their products comply with that Standard? There are many excellent goods on the market which might have no difficulty in complying with the British Standards issued in respect of their line, but a manufacturer may not choose to announce that his goods comply with the relevant British Standard. In this he may be mistaken, but it is his own free choice.
Some hon. Members may have heard an interesting discussion that the B.B.C. broadcast on 11th March, which I managed to hear. It was called "Calling Consumers". In the course of that discussion a Mr. Tomalin, speaking as a manufacturer and retailer of branded textiles, said that he thought that the Kitemark was a bad idea, reducing things to the lowest common denominator and not discriminating between the merits or the variety of the qualities offered. He expressed the fear that a universal standard might become the lowest common denominator and argued that the brand name of a good manufacturer was a more effective means of protecting the consumer than a relatively low British Standard incorporating a Kitemark scheme.
As against this there is the view, which I know is held strongly by the British Standards Institution, that a Kitemark is better than a lowest common denominator. They maintain that it is what they call a "good pass mark". I make this point because I think there is room in the economy for goods of all kinds. As my hon. Friend the hon. Member for Beckenham (Mr. Goodhart) said, it may well be that the Kitemark should be superseded by a series of Kitemarks of different qualities. Perhaps it is not the best protection for the consumer to try, as in the days of the Utility scheme, to have a fairly low standard, since this would discourage better manufacturers from endorsing that standard. Obviously this is something to be considered by the committee I have in mind when it looks into the subject.
I want to make one or two remarks on the subject of the B.S.I. Consumer Advisory Council. I realise, as I daresay hon. Members in all parts of the House do, that members of the Council are feeling somewhat discouraged by the fact that, in spite of a great deal of pressure on their part for additional standards and

Kitemarks for consumer goods, progress has been slow. I have a great deal of sympathy with this point of view.
The members of the Consumer Advisory Council are all busy men and women who take a keen interest in the work of bringing together consumer and manufacturer. While I appreciate their disappointment at the seeming unwillingness of manufacturers to co-operate with them, I hope they will be heartened in their task of trying to put forward and to uphold the consumers' interest by the recent example, the need for a standard for children's footwear, a point which the hon. Lady has raised several times.

Miss Burton: That has taken six years and we have got nowhere.

Mr. Rodgers: I will not say that in such a matter, which is a technical one, the manufacturers are necessarily wrong. I ask the members of the Consumer Advisory Council of the B.S.I. to be patient and, if they believe they are right, to be persistent in their point of view. If public opinion is on their side then, through the Council and outside it, public opinion will make itself heard by the manufacturers. Perhaps I may be allowed to cite as evidence the fact that manufacturers are now discussing a possible standard for components of children's footwear.
One thing more the Council has put forward to the Executive Committee of the B.S.I., as the hon. Gentleman the Member for Sunderland, North (Mr. Willey) knows, is a plea for the reconstitution of itself as a separate legal entity instead of being an integral part of the B.S.I. Indeed, it proposes the creation of a national consumer council not unlike. I should imagine, the body which the hon. Gentleman has in mind.
If their desire to be independent is met, I understand they would be willing to give the same service to the B.S.I. as they have done in the past. The views of the Council have been transmitted to the Board of Trade and we are now examining those proposals. They will receive sympathetic consideration, but equally they will be the subject of an inquiry by the Consumer Protection Committee which we have in mind to set up as soon as possible. Mention has also been made by the hon. Gentleman of the B.B.C


"Shopping List". I think he was referring to the B.B.C. programme which, for five minutes round about breakfast time, is broadcast twice a week on Wednesdays and Fridays. I think that this is a most useful service, useful to the distributor, the producer and, of course, to the consumer, and I hope that members of the public who are not already aware of this broadcast will be encouraged by this debate to listen in and take advice from it. I should like to commend the B.B.C. for its enterprise in this regard and to acknowledge the help which its researchers receive from those whom they consult when compiling the "Shopping List".

Mr. Willey: I should like to join with the hon. Gentleman in commending what the B.B.C. are doing. What I have in mind is something much more important than the work that is being done now. I was really thinking of the B.B.C. as a medium to make more widely known the information in Which? and Shoppers' Guide and that sort of information. We all know that the B.B.C., under its Charter, has difficulties, but I think that we ought to consider this.

Mr. Rodgers: I think that that is a very interesting suggestion. No doubt the people in charge of this programme at the B.B.C. will be studying the remarks of the hon. Gentleman and will see if they can implement them, or perhaps seek advice from other quarters before they go any further.
The hon. Gentleman also suggested that we ought to assist the Retail Trading Standards Association in prosecutions that it brings against traders who mislead the public. In fact, there is already, as the hon. Gentleman probably knows, a good deal of co-operation between the Board of Trade and the Association in the matter of prosecutions. Some times the Association brings to our notice suspected cases of infringement of the Merchandise Marks Acts. If inquiries show that on the facts the prosecution is justified, the Board of Trade are willing to take the offender into court. I do not think, however, that it would be right for us to subsidise the activities of the Retail Trading Standards Association in this field.
While it does—and I am glad to have this opportunity of acknowledging the

services of the Association—a great deal of useful work on behalf of the consumer, its primary objects, as its name implies, are to raise and maintain the standards of retail trading. I feel, therefore, that the present informal co-operation which exists between the Association and the Board of Trade is the right thing, and I would frankly resist the suggestion that the Association should receive more formal and, in particular, financial assistance. I have the impression, moreover, that it rather cherishes, and. in fact, relishes, its independence and unfettered right to criticise even the Board of Trade on occasions. This also goes for other organisations.
No doubt the organisation which publishes the pamphlet Which? has considerable doubts, as I understand it, about the wisdom or not of being absorbed by any national consumer protection body. I have discussed this with the officers of that Association and I see their point of view. On the other hand, it is equally true to say that if such a national body were to be established—I am not saying that this would be the necessary outcome of this Committee which will recommend on such cognate matters—obviously all interests would have to be represented on it. Of course, it is a difficulty that the Consumer Association would object to the manufacturers and retailers being represented at all. It would not be fair to have a national body which excludes any section of the community.
In all these problems—this is where I sometimes cross swords with the hon. Lady—I do not think that in a society such as ours, even where standards and protection are required, we can or should, except where there is deliberate fraud—and there is other mechanism for dealing with that—get into a position where we try to enforce things which should be voluntarily negotiated.
I turn for a moment to the weights and measures question. I have already referred to the Hodgson Committee and our reasons for not yet being in a position to go ahead with the introduction of a new weights and measures Act. Meanwhile, many local authorities are trying to make increasing use of the Merchandise Marks Acts to make up for the deficiencies of the weights and measures Acts. Short weight, measure or number are false trade descriptions


which all come within the purview of the Merchandise Marks Acts.
Weighing—that is, weighing machines, petrol pumps, etc.—has to be inspected at least once a year, but power is given to the Board to extend the period to two years in the case of any local authority where the circumstances justify such action.
In the case of food and other commodities which are required to be sold by weight or measure, the amount of inspection is a matter for the local authorities. They are required, however, to make an annual report to the Board of Trade on the work done by their inspectors, and the Board draws the attention of the local authorities to cases where it considers that insufficient inspection has been undertaken.
One way of protecting the consumer against short weight or measure in commodities is by making test purchases, but some local authorities may be reluctant to spend ratepayers' money for this purpose. It is possible that some of them might welcome a grant from the central Government to enable them to adopt this policy more freely, but I believe that the vast majority of them would be against such a grant. However, all these are matters to which I believe a great deal more attention should be paid.
I switch for a moment to the subject of switch selling. The hon. Member for Swindon (Mr. F. Noel-Baker) said that he would be rough with me about it. I shall try to answer him in advance of his roughness. He brought it on himself by telling me that he proposed to raise the subject, and I thought I had better have an answer prepared which he would consider to be a better one than that which I gave yesterday. I do not think the hon. Member can complain if I now give him that reply.
As I said at Question Time yesterday, we have looked into the problem of switch selling and have investigated information from a great many sources—executives and salesmen now in the business, former executives and employees, dissatisfied customers and a large number of letters sent to the British Broadcasting Corporation following the "Panorama" broadcast. We have also examined information provided by the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising,

the Retail Trading Standards Association and—I thank him for it—the hon. Member for Wednesbury (Mr. Stone-house). The report of the Board's investigators will not, however, be made public. This is the usual practice in matters of this kind.
I can, however, say that 430 letters commenting on switch selling were sent to the British Broadcasting Corporation after the "Panorama" broadcast. Of these, 73 were complaints against named companies, 135 criticised switch selling generally, 215 objected to switch selling advertisements appearing in the Radio Times, and five were in favour of switch selling. We also received great cooperation from the management of one group which is said to be one of those most conspicuously concerned with "bait" advertising and switch selling.
As far as we can make out, there is nothing fraudulent in attempting to sell a more expensive product than the one advertised by making out that the cheaper product is defective or out of stock. Hon. Members may think this practice reprehensible, but in matters of this kind the Board can take action only by way of prosecution against false or misleading trade descriptions under the Merchandise Marks Acts.
As I said yesterday, two newspaper proprietors associations have made new recommendations. The first recommendation is that advertisements inviting readers to apply for particulars must give the persons replying to them an opportunity of indicating whether they desire such particulars by post or a representative to call. Secondly, such advertisements must not be permitted to contain offers of free gifts, free insurance, free entry into competitions. Thirdly, such advertisements must not be permitted to contain a coupon price reduction offer. Fourthly, agencies placing advertisements under this heading must be required to obtain from their clients and lodge with the Secretary of the Newspaper Proprietors Association an undertaking that sufficient stocks of the article advertised are available to meet reasonable demands, and that the product advertised will be freely available to readers responding to the advertisement.

Mr. John Stonehouse: At that price?

Mr. Rodgers: That is part of the description of the article which is advertised.
The effect of these recommendations should be salutory in removing the more reprehensible features of this practice, but we must keep a sense of proportion about these things. Advertising is an essential and vital part of the commercial life of the country and unnecessary restrictions on the terms and conditions of advertising will not help buyers and will certainly not help consumers. If newspapers and periodicals adopt the recommendations of their respective associations, much of the cause for complaint should be eliminated. I do not, however, believe that this problem can be satisfactorily settled by legislation. I hope that the steps which have been taken as a result of the investigation which the Board of Trade made into this matter will be of great satisfaction to the hon. Members who have played a notable part in focussing public attention on this practice.
I could say much more and refer to foodstuffs, soft drinks, medicine and various other subjects which have been raised. I apologise to the hon. Member for Rossendale (Mr. Anthony Greenwood) for saying nothing about restrictive trade practices. That is a very large subject which cannot be answered adequately in an aside in this type of debate, because it raises immense issues about the powers of the Restrictive Trade Practices Court and its timing and whether other factors can ever be brought into play to frustrate its decisions.
Equally, I apologise for not saying anything about the possibility of more flexibility in legislation. This is a point which was also raised by the hon. Member for Hillsborough. It is an enormous constitutional question which I should not now attempt to answer.
I say most sincerely that I hope that the whole House will be heartened, as I believe the public itself will be, at the evidence of the Tory Party's desire to continue its historic rôle of protecting the consumer by the decision today to set up a Committee which will investigate the whole problem. I hope within days or weeks to be able to announce both the terms of reference and the names of the chairmen and the persons who will constitute that Committee.
Once again, I thank the hon. Member for Sunderland, North for his courtesy and for the friendly way in which he has raised this important subject.

3.58 p.m.

Mr. Francis Noel-Baker: I am sure that the House is extremely grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, North (Mr. Willey) for having raised this very important debate. I am sorry that I cannot say that I am grateful to the Parliamentary Secretary, who has left me precisely one and a half minutes to wind up the debate. We know that, owing to the filibustering which took place to try to use time before we got to this subject, we have had little time to discuss it, and the Parliamentary Secretary himself seems to have indulged in similar tactics, which some of us greatly deplore.
Nevertheless, we welcome the announcement that there is to be an inquiry. We shall feel much happier—or we hope so—when we know the composition of the committee. I hope that the committee's inquiries will be a great deal more effective than those of the totally ineffective inquiry which the Parliamentary Secretary has just conducted into switch selling, and which told us nothing which we did not already know, and that the new inquiry will make it more difficult for racketeers to continue to indulge in this reprehensible practice.
The Parliamentary Secretary said yesterday that he had no evidence to enable criminal proceedings to take place. We knew that before. If there had been grounds for legal action, the Retail Trades Standards Association would have taken that action long ago. We deplore the Government's ineffectual attitude towards the problem of consumer protection. I am only sorry that I do not have time to recite the many examples in which we feel that the Government have failed in their duty.

Mr. R. P. Hornby: In the very few seconds available to me I want, first, to welcome the announcement of my hon. Friend about the appointment of the committee and, secondly, to suggest that we should be wary of entrusting too many powers—

It being Four o'clock, the debate stood adjourned.

Orders of the Day — AGRICULTURAL IMPROVEMENT GRANTS BILL

Considered in Committee; reported, without Amendment; to be read the Third time upon Friday. 10th April.

Orders of the Day — SMALL LOTTERIES AND GAMING ACT, 1956 (AMENDMENT) BILL

Considered in Committee; reported, without Amendment; to be read the Third time upon Friday, 10th April.

Orders of the Day — SUPREME COURT OF JUDICATURE (AMENDMENT) BILL

Read the Third time and passed.

MARY FORD

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Whitelaw]

4.4 p.m.

Mr. I. J. Pitman: I raise the question of Mary Ford today because some Members of the House have been made anxious by a printed circular, signed by two councillors of Bath, which has been circulated to "all Members of Parliament", and because it ought to be, if anyone, the Member for the city who should respond to such an invitation or challenge. Previously, at my request, the Minister, using reserved powers, held inquiries not once but twice, and assured me that she could find no grounds which would justify an intervention.
The letter revives the controversy over the action which the Bath City Council took in removing Mary from the foster home in which she had been boarded by the children's committee for three and three-quarter years, and in making other arrangements for her future. There was much public indignation at the time. It must, however, he not so much the controversy and indignation as the welfare of the girl, her present and her future welfare, with which we ought all to be concerned; the past is not relevant at all, save only as it may enable a right present and future for the girl. I have approached my task with an open mind and a determination to be objective and conscientious. After all, it is well known that even natural parents can occasionally behave so badly towards their children that the local authority may need to remove the child from the care of the parents, and it might be that in this case the local authority ought no less rightly to have removed the child in the child's interest.
It is equally well known that even the best children's committee and local authority can sometimes maladminister, and it might have been that in this case such a mistake had been made. I have, therefore, travelled many miles accompanied by my wife to interview the children's officer, the child care officer, the chairman of the children committee, the headmaster of her school in Corsham,


the Greenwoods, the town clerk of Bath, the head mistress of the fee-paying boarding school where the girl now is, and the only one, Mr. Reuben Brown, of those two councillors who signed the letter, who was available.
I spoke on the telephone to the senior mistress at the Corsham school and interviewed Councillor Mrs. Williams, a Governor of the Corsham school, also Mr. and Mrs. Ewart, the warden and matron of the Vinney Green Reception Home of the Bristol authority and the town clerk again, all in that order. I saw Mrs. Guest who knew Mary well and asked to see me; also later Councillors Mayer and Brown who asked to see me jointly.
I have here a full report. There is no time to read it but if any Member wishes to see it I will let him do so. I will also send a copy to the Minister. Meanwhile, I must confine myself to some of the higher lights. I visited first her headmaster to ask him about the co-operation of the Greenwoods with the local authority. This issue has been point No. 2 in the letter which reads:
They consistently refused to co-operate with the local authority.
His answer was that in 31 years' teaching experience, and 16 as headmaster, he had never met parents who so signally failed to co-operate with the school.
I next visited the Greenwoods. My first question was whether they had seen the letter in question. They had, and there were several hundred copies beside us as we spoke. I asked, was it written with their prior knowledge, consent and approval, and was it true in all its statements so far as they referred to them and Mary? The answer was yes, all such statements were true. So far as the others were concerned, they also were true because Mr. Brown had told them.
I asked about the suggested refusal by them to co-operate with the local authority over repeated requests that Mary be not threatened with a return to Bath. She and he replied that they did not co-operate because they had caned her and had found that threats of sending her away were effective whereas canings were not. They could not control Mary, who was an obstinate and difficult child, without the use of these very threats.
I then asked about the attempts by her headmaster and the visit of the senior

mistress to seek their co-operation with the school in getting Mary to do at home the work which Mary had missed through truancy. They said that they had told Mary not to do the work required by the school because they thought it wrong to require it.
I asked them about the third point that they had
continually threatened the child they would return her to the authority
and the answer, which they said they had approved,
True, but in jest; the family joke, never meant nor taken seriously.
I asked how was it that Mary could fear the threats of being sent away more than she feared the canings, if Mary had been brought up to regard the threat as only a joke. It took a long time for the significance of this question to be comprehended, and when comprehended it was the first stage in a change of attitude—
You are not on our side; you are not fair
and so on. Moreover there was no answer except a dogged persistence that Mary treated it as a joke.
I asked questions on other points and finally, on leaving her house, Mrs. Greenwood pleaded with me to do what I could to find some solution which might allow Mary to return. I said that I would welcome any sensible reconciliation and suggested that if my inquiries led to it I would be willing to propose to the council that if Mary were found to be happy in her new boarding-out arrangements when the time came for her to leave she should return to the Greenwoods, but, of course, only if the council approved and if Mary expressed the desire to do so, and they, the Green-woods, still wished to have her. In that way she could again be the foster daughter they desired, who might even be regarded by them as their heir.
Quick flashed back the answer,
No. She must be back by Easter or I will have nothing to do with her.
Little did she realise the potential implication of this answer on the possibility that her affection for Mary, as Mary, might be suspected and that it might be suggested that she thought first, in wounded pride, of a self-vindication which needed to be immediate.
The next day my wife and I visited the fee-paying boarding school at which Mary Ford is now a pupil. It is a lovely school. We saw everything. We saw Mary Ford in her classroom. She appeared bright and happy, healthy and alert, indistinguishable in her smart school uniform from the others. I learnt that she was happy, doing well and becoming friendly with the very girls whom the headmistress would have chosen. She liked boarding school and was alert and indefatigable in her efforts to behave and be just as other girls around her.
I asked about letters: to whom was she writing her Sunday letter? Did she write to the Greenwoods? The answer was that "home" to her had effectively become Vinney Green and Mr. and Mrs. Ewart, the warden and matron, and their two young boys. My wife and I were later that day to see a sheaf of her letters to Mr. and Mrs. Ewart and to each of the children, the typical happy letters of any happy schoolgirl.
From Councillor Brown I hoped to obtain information of the sources upon which he based the many statements in the letter to which he put his signature. All the others we interviewed were welcoming, friendly and fully co-operative, but he was reluctant, evasive and, in declining to disclose one of the sources which he claimed, not forthcoming. The contrast between his attitude and cooperation and that of the Children's Officer and the Child Care Officer was most noticeable. The latter were anxious to be helpful and supplied records axiomatically wherever such confirmation was desirable.
We next visited Mr. and Mrs. Ewart at Vinney Green. They are warden and matron, under the Bristol City Authority, of that Children's Reception Home. They are well known to the hon. Member for Coventry, North (Mr. Edelman) who has permitted me to say that no praise could be too high for the experience, devotion and integrity of these two. The hon. Member for Coventry, South (Miss Burton) has also authorised me to join her in this assessment.
Here again we saw everything to do with Mary Ford. I asked how Mary seemed when she arrived. They said that

she had been observed by them, by their staff and by the specialist medical officers, and that all of them had agreed that they had never seen a girl of that age who appeared more deprived of affection, of the ability to receive it or to give it, and this, be it noted, from those in a home specialising in receiving children from homes with a bad history of lack of affection; that so soon as any sense of security had been restored Mary became over-demonstrative. I was to learn later from Mrs. Guest, of Corsham, that any little affectionate action or remark addressed to Mary would reduce her to tears.
I asked how it came that Mary had returned to the Greenwood's after six days. They replied that the continual threats by the Greenwoods of eviction from their home had caused in the girl a most strong sense of insecurity and forged an unnatural linkage of security with, and only with, the Greenwood home. She was free at Vinney Green to come or go, and on her way to school had gone on impulse to Woodlands where alone she supposed that security could be enjoyed.
I finally interviewed the town clerk and asked to be furnished with a copy of a letter dated 23rd February, 1955, from the Wiltshire County Council's Children's Officer—which I will mention later—and to ask whether Councillors Brown and Mayer had been given facilities to study the records in the Guildhall and what steps they had so taken. I learned that Councillor Brown had been invited early in December to do so, but that he did not take advantage of the offer and was questioned at the Children's Committee for his reasons for declining—it was not until 11th February that he studied the record—and that Councillor Mayer had not attempted to look at them. Mr. Mayer later denied this, answering me that he had asked for access and been refused.
My conclusions and those of my wife are that 10th November was the best day yet in the life of poor Mary Ford; that Mrs. Greenwood, who is aged 61, and has had no children of her own, has indeed—with casings and threats of eviction from her home—behaved to Mary so badly that the question is not whether she was rightly taken away, but rather whether the city had taken a risk in


putting her there in the first place and may not have remained for too long overoptimistic in supposing that the elderly couple would or could mend the error of their ways. By their own lights they are good foster parents, but the lights have been the wrong lights. The city council was right, I believe, when it thanked them for what they had "tried" to do for Mary.
In such a situation of conflicting judgment and of evidence upon which to judge, the Minister will, I suggest, have only two choices; either, as the circular letter is in effect suggesting, that there has been organised by the Children's Officer of Bath a conspiracy, in which that official, single handed, had persuaded the Child Care Officer, the Corsham headmaster and senior mistress, the warden and matron of Vinney Green—which, after all, is a Bristol and not a Bath Child Reception Home—her headmistress of the new school, and the Children's Department of the Wilts County Council, all to band together to cover up the local authority in a wrongful exercise of its parental rights; or that the councillors have been misguided and have been thus wrong in their statements and the Greenwoods wrong in theirs.
Certainly, my wife and I left the Greenwood home each pitying poor Mary, confident that in no circumstances should any other child be boarded out with that elderly couple as Mary was. We hope that the Minister will be able to confirm and accept this recommendation. At this point, the letter of 23rd February, 1955, is significant since it concerned another little girl who spent a trial day with the Greenwoods. It was written four years ago, before Mary was boarded out with the Greenwoods:
My Child Care Officer did introduce a little girl of thirteen to Mrs. Greenwood and we did not feel very satisfied with the result. The girl was rather a shy, quiet child, but was very excited to be spending an afternoon and evening with an 'Aunty'. However, when she returned to the Children's Home it came out that she had not enjoyed herself. Mrs. Greenwood had taken her to spend the afternoon with an old lady which the child found rather boring, and had given her a lecture about the importance of washing her hands frequently, and always looking nice in order to be a credit to Mrs. Greenwood. In fact, it seems that Mrs. Greenwood had rather looked down on the child coming from a

Home. Mr. Greenwood was apparently much nicer. My Child Care Officer also felt Mrs. Greenwood was very tactless about what she said in front of the girl in spite of being well warned beforehand. We did not feel this visit was a very auspicious beginning to a good foster home relationship, and therefore decided not to make use of this home.
The Greenwoods are, no doubt, in all other respects, a meritorious couple even if as foster parents they were misguided, inexperienced, conceited and self-deceiving. After all, there are others of whom this might be true if they, having had no children themselves, were to embark in the near sixties upon the difficult adventure in parental relationship which foster-parenthood is. However, I believe that the Minister will find that it has not been they who have been solely, or even greatly, to blame in what appears to have been a misdirection of the Press and a hoax upon the maternal and paternal sympathies of the British people. There seems to be no escape from the conclusion that Councillor Reuben Brown, as the Councillor in the minority of one, has judged wrongly, acted misguidedly and misled the others.
Incidentally, this is not a political issue on the Bath Council. Indeed, in the Children's Committee where the voting was 12 to 1 Councillor Brown was voting against all three members of his own party, all the Liberals, and all the co-opted members as well as all the majority party.
I suspect that the Minister will find that Mr. Brown, in his poor judgment, has done much harm to the Children's Service and to foster children generally. Those who might become foster parents will have been deterred, and those who are already foster parents will have been disturbed in their relations with children's officers. Those engaged in serving the children will have found much more difficulty in their dealings with foster parents.
Perhaps we may have learned a lesson from this case—to leave supervision and special inquiry to the Minister and to have respect for his findings. To do so would save much controversy and suffering. After all, why ask my hon. Friend to inquire and pay no attention or respect? For my part, I have made inquiries, because it appeared that this House would wish to be informed, but for me it has been an invidious and thankless task to attempt to clear up this


unhappy episode. It has been a sad story. Mary is, however, happy and doing well.
At any rate, the House has provided an opportunity to undo some of the mischief which has been done and to set at rest the sympathies of those who have been thus needlessly harrowed. I hope and, indeed, confidently expect that the Minister's inquiries will have led her to conclusions comparable with those of my wife and myself, and I trust that she, in being able publicly to assure the House and the nation, will put an end to this most regrettable squabble.

4.19 p.m.

The Joint Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Miss Patricia Hornsby-Smith): I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for Bath (Mr. Pitman) for the public spirited manner in which he has approached this difficult problem. I am sure that the House appreciates the infinite trouble he has taken to interview all the people concerned in an endeavour to arrive at the facts.
First, I want to make the position of the local authority clear. Mary Ford, an orphan, has been in the care of the Bath City Council since 1946. That Council, and that Council alone, is vested with parental rights and powers in respect of the child by virtue of a resolution passed in 1947. It has a statutory duty imposed upon it to further her best interests.
There are, unhappily, a considerable number of children deprived of their natural parents who come into care. On an average there are at any one time about 110 children in the care of the Bath City Council for varying reasons. Its Children's Committee is, therefore, experienced. Several of its members have families of their own and, like all local authorities charged with these duties, it takes a very close and special interest in those children likely to be in care throughout their childhood and whose entire future depends on the manner in which the authority discharges its duties.
It is not enough to be satisfied that a child is boarded out. Local authorities are concerned to see that the child is in a happy and helpful environment and that, at the time of passing from their charge—in the case of a normal child it may be at any age up to 18—that child

shall have some basis of security resulting from an education and training that will enable it to stand on its own feet when the time comes.
A local authority may board a child out with foster parents, as, in these circumstances, the Bath City Council, in 1955, boarded Mary Ford out with Mr. and Mrs. Greenwood. But, and this is, unfortunately, something that Mrs. Greenwood could not or would not recognise, boarding out in no way relieves the local authority of its direct and statutory duty to look after the child's interests. If it considers that the interests of the child would be better served by other arrangements, it is under an obligation to remove the child.
Thus the responsibility rests on the local authority, and suggestions that an appeal could be made to the Secretary of State are ill-founded, as the Home Secretary is not a court of appeal in any dispute between the authority and foster parents from whom a child has been removed.
It is true that the Home Secretary exercises a general oversight over the local authority child care service, including the general boarding out arrangements of individual authorities, and he gives general guidance to them. He has no power to give directions to a local authority as to the accommodation and care of an individual child. But he would wish to make his views known to an authority in an individual case if he considered that it had failed in or exceeded its duty, or acted contrary to the interests of the child.
Now may I deal with one or two specific items which have contributed to the removal of Mary Ford from the home of Mr. and Mrs. Greenwood? From the outset Mrs. Greenwood, both verbally and in writing, has shown that she resented advice as to Mary's upbringing tendered by the child care officer, and failed to appreciate that the local authority had not and could not abdicate its responsibilities merely by boarding Mary out.
Here, may I refer to the allegation that Mrs. Greenwood had no knowledge of the reasons leading up to the council's decision and the further allegation and criticism that the Children's Officer visited only three times. The Children's Officer, who is a very senior and experienced member of the Bath City Council


staff, obviously cannot do all the routine child care visiting, but, as well as his visits to the Greenwood's, experienced and fully qualified child care officers visited the home 26 times. Their reports, culled over four years, show very clearly the close and human interest taken in the child by the local authority.
I should like to give a few examples which answer the allegations in the pamphlet. I want particularly to confirm a point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Bath. Child care officers—and this is borne out by their reports over the years—repeatedly asked Mrs. Greenwood not to threaten the child that "she would be returned to Bath" as a method of disciplining her. Not only the child care officers, but the doctor is on record also as tendering his advice and asking Mrs. Greenwood not to use this threat.
Here we have a child, with no parents or family of her own, and for whom the local authority sought to find the security of a family home. It seems to me that to threaten the child that she would be "sent back" was cruel and unsettling. Time and again Mrs. Greenwood was asked to abandon this practice, but she contended that it was an effective way of dealing with Mary when she was naughty. In the pamphlet, it is said that it was a joke. It is not a joke to an orphan child and it destroys any sense of newly-found security that she may have had. If it was a joke, why use it at all? From the frequency with which this complaint has figured in reports of more than one responsible officer, I have no doubt whatever that it was meant and accepted as a threat.
Then we come to the question of the medical examination. Here again, I challenge the statement in the pamphlet. Here is a woman, Mrs. Greenwood, claiming to be a devoted foster-parent, wholly concerned with the girl's upbringing and well-being. Here, too, is a young orphan girl of 14, adolescent, possibly even a little apprehensive about her medical examination. To help the foster-parent in caring for a child, it is necessary and desirable that the foster-mother should be present at the periodical medical examinations to discuss the child's progress with the doctor, but Mrs. Greenwood persistently refuses to attend.
I have gone in great detail into the reports of the last incident relevant to this complaint. As Mrs. Greenwood had not bothered to attend previously, a particular request was made to her to attend in August, 1958. Mary arrived alone, stating that the Greenwoods had brought her to Bath, but had gone to the cinema. She was asked to meet them outside the cinema and invite them to attend. By the time they emerged, it was too late for the examination to take place.
The child care officer visited Mrs. Greenwood to explain the great importance of her attending and a second appointment was fixed at a time suitable to the Greenwoods. This was confirmed by letter, but on 9th September Mrs. Greenwood telephoned to say that she had no intention of bringing Mary to the medical examination. Again, the officer patiently explained and another appointment was made the following day. A letter from Mrs. Greenwood arrived saying that she refused to be present, with the ultimate result that it was necessary for Dr. Mack to go to the foster-home to examine the child. There are also repeated examples of non-co-operation with the school authorities, some of them trivial as individual items, but adding up to a situation in which Mary was made to appear the odd child out and was not enabled to co-operate as readily as other children.
I come now to the manner in which the Council has considered the case. I wish particularly to draw the attention of the House to the highly tendentious statement circulated by Councillors Brown and Mayer to this effect:
He"—
that is, the Children's Officer—
reported the matter to the Children's Sub-Committee, who, having full confidence in their officer, without further check, agreed that the child be removed from their care. Having been party to a dispute, he became the judge and the cause was lost because these two rôles are incompatible.
The Children's Officer did not make the decision. He has no authority to do so. He rightly reported to the case subcommittee of the Children's Committee that he had been asked by the Green-woods to take Mary away and her subsequent removal was witnessed by a child care officer who was with him in the car at the time. This followed a dispute over some extra school work—


not 500 lines—which Mary had been told she must make up after being absent from school.
Having given his report to the case sub-committee, the Children's Officer sought instructions. I hope that the House will bear with me if I give the detailed list of meetings that the council held on this case. On 6th November, the case sub-committee unanimously decided to remove Mary Ford from the Greenwoods. At this stage, that committee was doing no more than implementing the request which had been made by the Greenwoods.
The action thus far taken was confirmed by 12 votes to one at the Children's Committee on 17th November, but it was agreed to accede to the Greenwoods' request for an interview, to which they wished to bring their solicitor. On 24th November, a specially appointed sub-committee interviewed the Green-woods and their solicitor, and after that interview unanimously confirmed the Children's Committee's decision to remove Mary Ford.
On 9th December, at a special meeting of the Children's Committee, the decision was again approved by 12 votes to one. On 6th January, at a full meeting of the Bath City Council, the Children's Committee's report was received and approved by 38 votes to seven and a vote of confidence in the Committee was passed by 39 votes to six. Thus, Councillors Brown and Mayer, fully aware of the exhaustive manner in which the Council have investigated and considered the case, make a totally unwarranted attack on their Children's Officer, to which he cannot reply, and yet themselves deny the democratic processes of an elected Council, whose decisions have been taken with overwhelming majorities.
I mentioned earlier that if the Home Secretary considered that an authority had failed or exceeded its duty, he would wish to make his views known to it. I have to inform the House that in the case of Mary Ford, after considering very carefully the Council's reasons for terminating the boarding out, and the representations made by and on behalf of the foster-parents, the Home Secretary can find no ground whatsoever for any such approach to the Council on his part.
Mary Ford has been placed in an independent boarding school recognised by the Ministry of Education. It is not a school for maladjusted or delinquent children. Although the facts of the case afford no ground for intervention by the Secretary of State, at the request of the local authority he arranged for the Chief Inspector of the Home Office Children's Department, a woman of thirty years' experience in this field, to visit the girl at school without notice. The Chief Inspector's report, which I have studied most carefully, confirms that Mary Ford is happy and is making good progress. The worst thing that could happen now would be that she should continue to be the centre of controversy and publicity which would make her feel insecure and prevent her from taking full advantage of the opportunities she has in a very good school. She is settling down happily, making progress in her education, and benefiting from the regular school life and the companionship of girls of her own age.
I can only hope that in the child's interest she will be allowed to settle down in her present surroundings and live a normal life without further publicity.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at twenty-nine minutes to Five o'clock.